Le Cong Vinh's Internship at Hokuriku: Three Sessions and One Report

On September 6, 2026, on the training pitch of Hokuriku University, a 41-year-old man stood among groups of Japanese student players holding a notebook. By September 15, he had to submit a coaching report to instructors of the Japan Football Association (JFA). As of September 6, he had taken three sessions. Three themes: attacking, defending, counter-attacking.

I spent two days looking for more detail on those three sessions — duration, drill types, player feedback — and found nothing. A lack of data does not mean the work is bad. It only means we are discussing a profession none of us can actually see. Data whispers when the whole stadium is screaming. I learned to listen.

That man is Le Cong Vinh.

A pathway already drawn

Le Cong Vinh, 41, is the striker who scored 51 goals for Vietnam's national team and a member of the 2026 AFF Cup-winning side. After retiring, he took the coaching route with the AFC A licence. Phase 1 was completed in June 2026. Phase 2 ran in September 2026, the practical internship. Phase 3 is expected in December 2026. The licence is expected in April 2027, followed by the Pro licence — the highest AFC tier, mandatory to manage a national team or a top-tier continental club.

The internship at Hokuriku University was arranged through Vietnam Football Federation Technical Director Koshida Takeshi, who is Japanese. The university's Team 1 had just reached the finals of the Japan Student Soccer Championship. The JFA sent a message of support. In the press, the story is told positively and gently.

The reasons Cong Vinh gave for choosing Japan over studying for the A licence at home: instructor-to-trainee ratio, an updated curriculum, and a wish to expand his network. The first two sound administrative. The third is the one worth analysing.

What is actually being tested

The three themes he taught at Hokuriku — attacking, defending, counter-attacking — are foundational. In any AFC A licence curriculum, those are the three basic phases a trainee coach must be able to present to instructors. That he is teaching them tells us nothing about how good he is. It only tells us he is doing the required part.

The only recorded quality-control mechanism is the report submitted to JFA instructors. There is no independent observation. Nobody other than the instructor sees the sessions. So every judgement along the lines of "he is improving" is speculation right now, mine included.

The more interesting part is the environment. Hokuriku University is Japanese student football — a high amateur level, where 18-to-22-year-olds train with structure and competitive targets, and whose Team 1 had just reached the national finals. It is a small but real stage. And it creates something Vietnamese football struggles to create for a former star: indifference.

In Vietnam, if Cong Vinh walked into a session as a coach, young players would look at him through the eyes of fans. His drills would be judged first by his name. At Hokuriku, he is a Vietnamese intern inside a JFA programme, working with players who may not know how many goals he scored at the AFF Cup. An empty stadium is the most honest mirror football has ever had. So is a session in front of people who do not know how famous you are.

I live in Incheon and watch the K League almost every week. In Korea, former internationals usually enter coaching through two doors: television punditry, or an apprenticeship inside a club's academy system. In Japan, the coaching route is clearly tiered, the pool of licensed instructors is large, and part of the professional culture is writing down what you just taught and letting someone else mark it. In Vietnam, the certificate tends to be the destination and the report tends to be paperwork.

Put the three football nations side by side and a pattern emerges: the gap between them is not tactical knowledge. It is assessment infrastructure. Japan pays instructors to grade trainees. Vietnam has fewer instructors per trainee and fewer follow-up loops. Cong Vinh said this in administrative language. He does not need to say it louder.

Over 16 years watching football from both sides, I have learned that federations usually import solutions rather than import standards. They buy a foreign coach, a foreign curriculum, a foreign expert. What they rarely import is the habit of grading themselves. A former leading Vietnamese striker flying to Japan to be graded by strangers is a signal federations should read closely.

Where I could be wrong, and the real trap

Let me argue against myself before anyone else does.

The biggest risk in this story lies elsewhere: Cong Vinh succeeding too fast and being handed a chair too early. Vietnamese football has a habit of elevating names before elevating systems. I get called the "hot-take guy" because for years I have written against the grain, and I know the price of being loved by a crowd: it makes you lazy about checking yourself. A legend handed a head coach's chair because he once scored 51 goals falls into the same trap, just at a larger scale.

I could be wrong. Those three sessions may be purely administrative, and I may be reading too much into a routine step everyone has to take. Or the A licence pathway in Vietnam may be better than I assume — I have no data on the quality of VFF courses, only the account of a man who chose to go abroad, and people tend to justify their own choices. It could also be an image-retention campaign: a retired player still needs to appear in the papers, and news of an internship in Japan achieves that without risk. I raise the possibility so it is not ignored.

My detractors read every line I write more carefully than the people who love me. If they find a hole in those three points, I will rewrite. I was wrong at the 2026 World Cup in Russia, and that was the best thing that ever happened to me — because it taught me the only thing I control is how fast I correct myself.

What to watch

If the timeline holds, in April 2027 Le Cong Vinh will hold the AFC A licence. That milestone will be widely reported, and it matters less than the next one: in the 12 months after it, does he coach a real team — even as an assistant, even in the second division, even in a youth academy?

If he does, we will see more former Vietnamese internationals flying to Japan to learn the trade, and this becomes a template. If he does not, we will have one more handsome certificate on a wall and one more handsome name on the bench of a television show.

I do not write to be loved. I write to be remembered. And I remember that Vietnamese football needs good coaches more than it needs more legends. A report filed on time in Hokuriku, graded by an unfamiliar instructor, may be the least glamorous step and the truest step a former Vietnamese player has taken in years.