The curious history of Sài Gòn FC
The rise and fall of a football club never live up to its name
Saigon FC was officially relegated. After seven seasons in the highest tier of Vietnamese football, their journey comes to an end. The saddest thing is that they are likely dissolved at the end of this season, regardless of whether they are relegated or not, as revealed by coach Phung Thanh Phuong at the press conference after the final match against Becamex Binh Duong. It’s a bittersweet ending, of course, but considerably predictable for a football club that has always carried the fate of a tiny piece in the political-economic chess game of its owners from the moment it began to bear the name Saigon FC.
Back to the Vleague 2016 season, the newcomer of the league was a team named Hanoi FC who won the 2015 First Division league. Basically this is the B team of Hanoi T&T, a team owned by “bầu Hiển”, that was on track to become a force in Vietnamese football. Chairman of Hanoi FC, Nguyen Giang Dong, is one of Hien's closest aids and is also the father-in-law of two superstars, Nguyen Van Quyet and Do Duy Manh. Unlike many other leagues, where the youth teams of the top tier teams are able to compete in the lower divisions but are not allowed to promote regardless of their position on the final rankings, the youth team of Hanoi T&T won the 2015 First Division - the 2nd tier of Vietnam football pyramid - and eligible to competed in the 2016 Vleague under the name Hanoi FC. Two Hanoi clubs faced each other in the 3rd round of that season and the match ended with a 1-1 draw. Hanoi T&T was led by Chu Dinh Nghiem and Hanoi FC was led by Nguyen Duc Thang, both grew their managerial career at the football empire built by “bầu Hiển”.
But there was a much more important event that took place not far from Hang Day stadium, where the Hanoi derby was played, that would decide the destiny of both teams. In January 2016, the Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam took place in Hanoi, electing the Party's new Politburo and the country’s new leadership. If you didn't know, the Politburo consists of 17 members who have the power to make the most important decisions in the country. A notable name on the Politburo list that year, was Dinh La Thang, the Minister of Transport. He was considered a rising star of Vietnamese politics, with an aggressive and fierce style that is quite rare to see in state officials. He was appointed Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee, becoming the most powerful figure in the country's No. 1 economic centre. Mr. Thang is a big football fan. In his spare time, Thang plays football regularly in internal matches between the officers of the Ministry of Transport. It was he who ordered PetroVietnam - the biggest corporation in the country, then Song Da Corporation where he used to be in charge, to sponsor Nam Dinh FC, the football club of his hometown, so they could be financially eligible to play in Vleague.
If you want to please a rising political star like Mr. Thang, there is no better way than through football. More than anyone else “bầu Hiển” thoroughly understands that. No one denies Hien's love of football, but the truth is no one is better than him at using football to win the hearts of state officials, thereby gaining advantages in making business deals. I won't go into details here (yes it’s self-censorship) but let’s think about this. Is there any coincidence between Quang Nam FC, a football team of Hien, winning Vleague 2017 in just more than a year after a politician (also a huge football fan and a close friend of Park Hang-seo) from Quang Nam province was elected to be the country’s prime minister?
Going back to Mr. Thang’s story, Hien soon sniffed an opportunity and immediately made the move. His academy team, led by Nguyen Giang Dong, moved the base from the capital to Ho Chi Minh City, following the relocation of Mr. Thang. They took the name Saigon FC, not Ho Chi Minh City, not only to avoid the confusion with another team playing in the First Division at that time but also because the name Saigon is more popular, and more beloved to more than 10 million people in this city. People have called it Saigon for more than a century, while Ho Chi Minh City has only heard since 1975. At the same time, Hien decided to change the name Hanoi T&T to Hanoi FC, a move to show that his team represents Hanoi and that his love of football is pure, not related to any branding interest. Good for him, but certainly a nightmare for any international football data provider. After three rounds of the 2016 season, suddenly Hanoi T&T becomes Hanoi FC while Hanoi FC becomes Saigon FC.
The first season of Hien’s football journey in the South was not bad. Under the guidance of coach Nguyen Duc Thang and president Nguyen Giang Dong, the team overperformed in an impressive playing style and finished at 7th place in the final ranking. The squad consists of many players on loan from Hanoi FC/Ha Noi T&T: Tran Dinh Trong, Ngan Van Dai, Nguyen Quoc Long, Nguyen Ngoc Duy, etc, all are familiar names in Vleague until now. In the first 4 seasons, Saigon FC went through 3 different presidents. In 2018 when Nguyen Giang Dong resigned from the post because of health reasons, Mr. Tran Tien Dai, who was originally a football agent, was appointed to replace him. Imagine one day Jorge Mendes finally lift the curtail to become the president of Wolves. One year later, it was Duong Nghiep Khoi, who used to hold many high positions at VFF, became the club’s president.
Two years later, in 2020, Saigon FC was transferred to a new owner, “literally nothing” to do with the news of Mr. Thang was arrested in Dec 2017. Him Lam Group and Ben Thanh Group, the famous names in the real estate industry, took over the club and Nguyen Cao Tri, a man who had never publicly appeared with the team and I also doubted his actual interest in football generally, become the chairman of the board.
Not only that, they also took over the PVF academy from VinGroup, after the No.1 private conglomerate in Vietnam felt the financial burden of running a football academy where they had spent millions of dollars to build five-star facilities and collaborating with world-class names like Ryan Giggs or Philippe Trousssier. In the beginning, it felt like everything just instantly clicked at Saigon FC-PVF. Saigon FC ambitiously collaborate with Japanese partners, bringing JLeague players to Vietnam and bringing young Vietnamese players to Japan, while PVF maintains its No. 1 status in youth tournaments. There was a time when some people really thought that Vietnamese football finally had a boss who knew how to take football seriously, after bầu Hiển and bầu Đức.
But then the honeymoon ended. Saigon FC’s performance has gone worse and worse, even under Vietnamese or Japanese coaches, and they would have been relegated in 2021 had the season not been canceled because of the pandemic. They seem to lose direction, and more importantly, lose patience, with the strategy of running a football club based on the naive trust on the young players, instead of pouring money into buying big stars and tall, fast foreign strikers like the rest of the Vleague. And most importantly their boss is …running out of money. After the glorious year of 2021 in both the stock market and the closely related real estate market when many people doubled or tripled their net worth literally by doing nothing, the year 2022 starts off with a nightmare for real estate tycoons in Vietnam. Market liquidity plunged, and stock prices collapsed accompanied by countless external uncertainty factors such as the war in Europe or the FED hike rate. But the scariest thing is not about losing money, it’s about being sent to jail. When the invisible hands of the real estate market have gotten out of control, the government intervenes. The owners of FLC (former owner of Thanh Hoa FC), Tan Hoang Minh (former sponsor of Hanoi FC), and Van Thinh Phat (co-owner of Ho Chi Minh City FC) were all arrested for allegedly manipulating the stock market and bond issuance fraud.
The higher the legal risk, the bigger desire of cutting costs by leaving any frivolous, non-profit economic sectors among the real estate tycoons. Football becomes a clear target here. Nguyen Cao Tri and his crews acted pretty quickly. They gave away PVF to the Ministry of Public Security (the agency who are chasing wealthy wrongdoings tycoons), while transferring the ownership at Saigon FC to Novaland, another real estate corporation in the South of the country. Wait, you’re probably asking: How come Novaland made such a big risky decision while the rest are being thrown into chaos? It’s either overconfidence or lazy analysis from Novaland. But it’s a face that back in September when the takeover happened everything was still looking good for them. A high-profile name from Novaland became the president of Saigon FC and immediately threw money into a desperate mission to rescue the club from the relegation spot. Two billion dong was given to Saigon FC players after their victory in the derby. I showed my concern about the financial health of Novaland/Novagroup in this newsletter more than a month ago, but I have to admit that those hefty bonuses had slightly eclipsed my initial suspicion.
The situation has only deteriorated since later October, in such a rapid pace that not only shook the fans of Saigon FC but also the shareholders of the company that owns the club. Since October 26, Novaland's share price has plunged more than 50% and now hits the floor price for 10 sessions in a row. Its owner Bui Thanh Nhon reportedly lost more than 1 billion USD worth of assets in less than a month. There are also rumors about a massive lay-off within the corporation and even the arrest of its top leaders. It's not surprising that the newly appointed president of Saigon FC is no longer showing up on the stands at their matches. No one is in the mood to think about football anymore. Just a few months ago, they (in rumor) talked about an ambitious plan of pouring a hundred billion dong per season into the pinky shirt team, now they liquidate the contracts with all players and coaching staff in the dressing room right after the final match of the season while still not paying off their signing-on fee and match bonus debt.
There’s still a possibility that the name Saigon FC will still exist on the Vietnamese football map in the next season, with academy players being promoted to the first squad to play in the First Division. But for most Vietnamese football fans, the name Saigon FC considerably died after the evening of November 19, when the owner decided to pull out of the club less than 3 months after acquiring it. There are only a few Saigon FC fans, simply because not many Saigon citizens feel the connection with a team originally from the North, using the name Saigon and the pitch of Thong Nhat stadium just to serve the big bosses’ non-football purposes. For the majority of Vietnamese football fans, anxiety begins to arise: Who will be the next “ông bầu” to run away from football? With the current looming economic situation and the dependence of Vietnamese football on money from real estate corporations, perhaps there will be more than one.