V.League 2026-2026 and the Pressing Question: What Distance Metrics Cannot Tell

On a March morning in Da Nang, the club training session began at six o'clock. I sat on a bench outside the touchline, where the dew from the previous night still clung to the grass. A young midfielder in a grey training shirt, a small GPS vest strapped to his back, ran loops around the pitch to warm up. He ran exactly on rhythm, no faster, no slower. Nobody watched him. When the session ended, the fitness coach opened his laptop and read aloud the distance figure. Eleven point two kilometres. The group nodded as though they had just witnessed something reliable. During that entire session, I counted twelve occasions where he ran into the space behind the opposition in the combination drills, and not once did the ball reach his feet. Twelve wasted runs. Yet if you looked only at the number on the screen, he was the hardest worker in the team. That is what I carried with me when I left the pitch that morning, and it is what made me start recording the pressing rhythm of an entire season in a different way. The season opens with a heartbeat in the press room, before the first whistle. This year that heartbeat came earlier than usual, because the V.League calendar grew denser and teams had to learn to live with pressure from the opening round. I have watched nearly thirty matches since the start of the season, sitting in many different stands, and what caught my attention was not the number of goals. It was the way teams define the word pressing. In Da Nang, where I live, the temperature this season rises to thirty-three degrees by midday. In Hanoi, February evenings are still cold enough that players must warm up twice before kick-off. In Nam Dinh, wind from the river sweeps into Thien Truong stadium and bends long passes. These small differences never appear on the official statistics sheet, but they decide the tempo of an entire match. A pressing team in Da Nang cannot run the way a pressing team in Hanoi runs in January. The human body does not read spreadsheets. I have covered eight Olympic Games, eight World Cups and many editions of the Tour de France. In every sport, I learned the same thing about data: a number is only correct when you know where it came from. A rider who finishes a stage with a high average power output may not have raced well. He may simply have sat on another rider's wheel the whole day, sheltered from the wind and saving his legs. Football is the same. Distance covered and sprint counts are packaged as indicators of effort. But ineffective running also produces beautiful numbers. I do not deny the value of physical data. I only question the way it is presented to spectators. When a television broadcast states that a midfielder ran twelve kilometres and declares him the soul of the midfield, I want to ask one more question. Where did he run those twelve kilometres, at what moment, and did the ball reach his feet after each run? The 2026-2026 season has seen a clear trend across most of the leading teams. They are moving from pressing as individuals to pressing as a block. This sounds technical, but it is in fact very simple. A team that presses as individuals allows one or two players to charge forward chasing the ball while the rest drop back and hold position. The result is that the players at the top of the pitch toil alone while their team-mates stand and watch. A team that presses as a block moves the whole line, keeping five to eight metres between players, pushing the opponent towards the touchline where the ball is easily lost. The difference between the two approaches is not in the distance run. It is in the location where the ball is recovered. If a team wins the ball back in the opponent's half, close to the opponent's penalty area, then the press has worked. If they win it back in their own half after the opponent has built up comfortably, then no matter how high the distance figure, the press has failed. I began recording this manually from the second round of the season, simply because I did not believe a single metric could tell the whole story. In the last three matches of the team I follow most closely in central Vietnam, their PPDA dropped significantly compared with the early part of the season. PPDA, the number of passes an opponent completes before this team performs a defensive action such as a tackle, interception or foul, shows they have become more proactive in applying pressure. But looking more closely, I saw the opposite. PPDA fell not because they pressed better, but because they fouled more in midfield. That is pressing with the body instead of with position. It creates a feeling of control but is in fact reactive. This is what data tables usually miss. A team that commits seventeen fouls in a match will have a pressing metric that looks very positive. But if seven of those seventeen fouls occur in their own half, after possession lost through their own error, then it is not pressing. It is firefighting. An empty stadium does not stop the ball from rolling; it only makes the applause lag one beat behind the heart. I noticed this while covering a match in an empty stadium early in the season, during a period when health measures still affected the scheduling. Without a crowd, players seemed able to hear their own footsteps. They moved more slowly, calculated more, and block pressing became easier to see from the empty stands. I sat alone in a middle row, recording each time the two midfields rose and dropped together. It was like watching an orchestra rehearse without an audience, where every musician hears the rhythm of the person beside them clearly. From those notes I drew a conclusion that I consider the most important of this season. In the V.League, teams do not lose because they run little. They lose because they run in the wrong places. And the irony is that the teams running in the wrong places often have the highest distance figures. Look at midfield. That is where this story is clearest. A central midfielder in the V.League runs on average ten to twelve kilometres per match. But that distance is divided into several kinds of running. There are runs to receive the ball, when a player separates from his marker and creates a passing option. There are runs to stretch the opponent's shape, when a player moves into space without receiving the ball. And there are runs to correct a mistake, when a player has just lost the ball and must chase it. These three kinds of running differ entirely in value. The first two build the structure. The third is simply paying a debt. But the GPS vest cannot tell them apart. It records them all the same. So a player with poor positional discipline, who repeatedly loses the ball and must chase, can have a higher distance figure than a player who holds position well and rarely has to run to compensate. I witnessed one such case at a northern club. After the match, a midfielder was praised in the papers for running more than twelve kilometres. But when I reviewed the footage, most of his distance came from repeatedly pushing too high, exposing the space behind him, and then having to run back. His opponent read it and simply passed the ball into that space. He ran a lot because he was out of position, not because he was hard-working. What is worth noting is that the coach knew. He told me after the match, as the two of us stood in the corridor outside the dressing room. He said he would rather have a midfielder who runs nine kilometres but is always in the right place, than one who runs twelve kilometres and nobody knows where he will be in the next three seconds. That remark reminded me of an English coach I interviewed many years ago. He said pressing is not running a lot. Pressing is making the opponent feel there is nowhere left to pass. Gegenpressing is not a strange wind; it is a wind cultivated over seasons of quiet running. In the V.League, the concept is still fairly new to most spectators, but clubs have begun to apply it consciously. The simplest way to understand gegenpressing is that when your team has just lost the ball, you do not drop back but immediately charge in to win it back within the first few seconds. The aim is not only to recover the ball, but to stop the opponent organising a counterattack. The opponent has just won the ball and is immediately surrounded, forced to play long or lose it again. But gegenpressing demands something many V.League teams do not yet have: the distance between the lines must be extremely small when the team is in possession. If the forward lines push up too high while the defensive line cannot follow, then when the ball is lost, the space between the lines becomes a motorway for the opponent. That is why gegenpressing often fails at clubs that have not built the physical foundation and positional discipline over several seasons. I followed one leading team throughout the first half of the season. They tried to apply gegenpressing in their first seven matches. The result was that they had the highest ball-recovery figures in the league in the first thirty minutes of each match, but also conceded the most goals in the last fifteen minutes of the first half. The cause was clear on review. After about twenty-five minutes of high-intensity pressing, their midfield was exhausted. The distance between the lines grew. The opponent needed only one pass through the lines to reach the defence. They ran a great deal, but their defence had to endure it. This is the biggest blind spot in reading football through physical data. People look at the midfield's distance and conclude the team played with energy. But they do not look at the defence's distance, which rises correspondingly because the defenders must run to cover the space the midfield leaves. Add it all up, and that team ran more than its opponent, but ran to fight fires rather than to attack. There is a simple check any spectator can perform. When watching a match, instead of looking at the player on the ball, look at the players without the ball behind him. If you see a team's defence constantly turning, dropping deep and running towards its own goal, then that team is not pressing. It is being pressed. The V.League this season has a feature that makes the analysis more interesting. The physical gap between teams is no longer as large as before. Lower-ranked teams have invested more in sports science, in nutrition and in monitoring training load. As a result, the gap in average distance covered between the top and bottom teams has narrowed. This means distance is no longer a competitive advantage. What makes the difference now is the quality of the runs. I will always remember one evening in a central stadium, when a small club hosted a big club. The small club ran nearly seven kilometres less than its opponent. But it won two-nil. After the match, I asked the small club's coach for his secret. He smiled and said he did not teach his players to run a lot, he taught them to stand in the right place. He said football is a sport where a player standing still in the right position is sometimes more useful than one running thirty metres only to arrive a step late. That philosophy sounds simple, but it runs against the general trend of modern football, where intensity is worshipped as an absolute measure. Youth academies in many places teach players to run more, faster, stronger. But they rarely teach players to read the game so they know when to run and when to stand still. The skill of reading the game cannot be measured in metres per second. So it is often overlooked in selection. This leads me to another observation about this season. The most successful teams are not those with the players who run the most. They are the teams whose players understand space best. When I watch a match involving the current league leaders, I notice their midfielders usually run only short bursts, but every burst has a purpose. They move to open a passing lane, to drag a defender out of position, or to block a space the opponent could exploit. There is little wasted distance. By contrast, struggling teams often have midfielders who move a great deal but ineffectively. They run to catch up with the game, not to control it. This difference does not appear on the distance sheet. It appears only when you watch the whole match and pay attention to the timing of each run. Transfers are separations written in advance; only the tears have no draft. This season the mid-season transfer market has been busier than usual. Many teams look to add a central midfielder capable of pressing. But I notice clubs often misjudge the type of midfielder they need. They look for someone who runs a lot, when what they truly lack is someone who holds position. They look for someone who tackles fiercely, when what they lack is someone who screens the space in front of the defence. A sporting director at a club I have known for years told me he receives dozens of scouting reports each transfer window, and most record the same metrics: pass completion, successful duels, average distance. He said those metrics are useful, but they do not tell him whether the player understands the game. To know that, he must watch at least ten full matches, and usually must sit in the stadium to see the whole team move. That is also why my work is still necessary after more than fifty years. A beat reporter sees things the camera does not. The camera focuses on the ball. I, by professional habit, usually look at those without the ball. That is where the real story of a match unfolds. I keep the team's rhythm not with a drum, but by never missing a single training session in thirty years. I do not say this to boast. I say it to explain why I trust observation over spreadsheets. A training session lasting two hours can give me more information than an official match, because in training players do not hide their intentions. They experiment, they fail, they correct. And in those moments I see how they think about the game. At another session I observed recently, the coach had the team play a small-sided game on a pitch half the size of the official one. He required the players to win the ball back within five seconds of losing it, otherwise the whole team had to run a lap of the pitch. I watched the players quickly realise they could not win the ball simply by running. They had to coordinate. One charged at the ball carrier, another closed the nearby passing lane, a third covered behind. Only when three acted together could they recover the ball in the time allowed. That drill taught them what no metric can: pressing is the work of a block, not an individual. After the session I asked a young player what he had learned. He said he had learned that running alone is useless. The answer was brief, but it contained a whole philosophy. And I think that if more V.League clubs had understood this earlier, they would have saved no small number of points. Now let us talk about an aspect few discuss. That is the role of the goalkeeper in a pressing system. In modern football the goalkeeper is not merely a shot-stopper. He is the one who starts every attack, and also the one who commands the defence when the team pushes up. When a team presses, its defence must advance, leaving a large space behind. The goalkeeper must read when the opponent will play the ball into that space, and must be ready to sweep outside his area to deal with it. This season I had the chance to follow a young goalkeeper very good with the ball at his feet. But that skill sometimes became a burden. Because he trusted his feet, he tended to hesitate when the ball came to him, searching for a beautiful pass instead of clearing safely. In some matches that hesitation nearly cost his team a goal. His coach had to tell him that sometimes a goalkeeper's job is to make things simple. I tell this story to emphasise one thing. In football, every choice has a price. A goalkeeper good with his feet can help a team control the ball better, but can also create risk. Likewise, a high-intensity pressing team can put pressure on the opponent, but can also burn through its own energy. No system is perfect. What matters is that players understand the price of the system they play. I have noticed that V.League teams this season split clearly into two groups in their approach. The first chooses a safe game, sitting deep, ceding the initiative and waiting for counterattacking chances. The second chooses a proactive game, pushing up, applying pressure and seeking to control the match. Both have merits and drawbacks, and neither is absolutely right. But what surprised me is how public opinion judges the two groups. The proactive group is often praised as modern, progressive, brave. The safe group is often criticised as conservative, negative, lacking ambition. But looking at results, I see the safe teams usually have steadier points tallies in the first half of the season, while the proactive teams fluctuate sharply. This does not mean a safe game is better than a proactive one. It only means each approach suits a particular squad and a particular context. A team with an inexperienced defence that still tries to push high will break easily. A team with a strong attack that sits deep will waste its talent. A good coach is one who knows which approach suits his team, and does not force them into a model that does not fit merely because that model is fashionable. This is the point I want to stress in the contrarian section of this piece. Public opinion tends to homogenise. When a team succeeds with pressing, people say every team should play that way. When a team succeeds with defensive counterattacking, people say that is the model. But football does not operate like an assembly line. Each team is a distinct collective with distinct people and distinct conditions. I once saw a V.League club sack its coach mid-season simply because he played too defensively. The replacement arrived promising an attractive attacking game. The result was that the team conceded twice as many goals and fell close to the bottom group. The problem was not the style. The problem was that the board misjudged the quality of its squad. They had defenders suited to defending but were forced to push high. They had forwards suited to fast counters but were forced into slow possession. They failed not because they played wrongly, but because they played something not meant for them. I think this is an important lesson for Vietnamese football. We tend to chase world football trends and forget that each football nation has its own features. Climate, pitch conditions, player physique, training culture all differ. A style that succeeds in Europe may not succeed in Southeast Asia. Not because it is inferior, but because it needs different conditions. Spectators remember goals; I remember the eyes of a substitute when the final whistle blows. Throughout this season I have often paid attention to the players on the bench. After each match, as the starters quietly walk into the tunnel while the stands are still singing, I see the substitutes stand up, gather the water bottles and towels. They have no celebration. No one runs to embrace them. Yet they are part of the match in a way no one records. I mention this because it relates directly to the theme. When we talk about pressing, we usually talk about the players on the pitch. But pressing is a living system, and it needs those off the pitch to sustain it. A team with good physical depth is one that can change eleven players on the pitch without dropping intensity. That does not depend on whether the first eleven run a lot or a little. It depends on whether the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth men are ready to run the same way when called upon. I have followed a team with excellent rotation this season. The notable point is that when they change four or five starting positions, their pressure quality barely drops. That is the sign of a well-organised team, where the system matters more than the individual. The substitutes, when they come on, do not try to do too much to make an impression. They simply take up their role in the machine. That humility is exactly what makes that team strong. In contrast are the teams that regularly struggle whenever they rotate. When they lose one or two key men, their style collapses. Usually these teams depend too much on a few individuals, and those individuals must run a great deal to compensate for the rest. That is why their key players often have the highest distance figures in the team, and are also the most injury-prone when the season reaches its decisive stage. This is a rule I have observed across many sports in my career. In cycling, a team that depends too much on one rider will fail in the long stages. In marathon running, the fastest runner at the halfway point is usually not the first to finish. And in football, the team that depends on one player running the most will be the first to run out of energy. So if distance is not the right measure, what should we look at? I propose three things any spectator can observe when watching a match. First, the location where the whole team recovers the ball. If your team regularly wins the ball in the opponent's half, that is good. If they regularly win it in their own half, that is not a good sign. Pay attention to the starting point of counterattacks. Second, the distance between the lines when the team loses the ball. If that distance is small, your team can apply pressure immediately. If it is large, the opponent will have time and space to build. Pay attention to whether the forward and defensive lines move together. Third, the number of times a team must run to compensate after losing the ball in midfield. If that number is high, it means the team is playing without positional discipline, however beautifully they run. Pay attention to whether players are running towards their own goal, and whether the opponent is passing into that space. These three things require no computer or analysis software. They require only attention. And I believe attention is the most powerful analytical tool we have, even in an age when everything is measured. I do not deny that data has its role. In many cases data helps us discover what the eye cannot see. It tells us a player's training load, his physical condition, and the long-term trends of a whole season. But data is only valuable when it comes with an understanding of context. A number says nothing on its own. It needs someone to interpret it, and that interpreter must understand the game. This is what I want to pass on to young football people in Vietnam. Do not trust spreadsheets absolutely. Learn to read data, but also learn to read people. Watch many matches. Go to the stadium. Sit in different corners. Look at the players without the ball. Because football, at its deepest level, is not a maths problem. It is a story written in choices. And the story of the 2026-2026 V.League season is writing its most important chapters. As the return leg begins, as the league enters its decisive phase, the players' bodies will have to endure more. The pressure of the relegation battle and the title race will grow heavier. And the teams that invested in positional discipline rather than only in fitness will be the most durable. I will continue to sit in central Vietnam's stands in the months ahead, recording every movement of the teams. I will keep counting the wasted runs and the forgotten spaces. Because I believe the true story of a match is not in the final score. It is in the moments before that score is created, when a player must choose between running and standing still. The question I leave for the reader is not which team will be champions. That is too easy, and the answer will come at the end of the season. The question I leave is this: in a football nation increasingly obsessed with intensity and metrics, can you still see the players standing still in the right place? If you can, you are seeing a part of the match that no computer will ever record. And I believe that part is the most beautiful.