1.25 million registered, 620 thousand actually played: Lessons from Pakistan's fuel subsidy programme for Vietnamese youth football

I stand at the training ground of a youth football academy in Vung Tau, where the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) has just announced a list of 120 young players receiving full scholarships from a new community football development programme. The head coach, a former national team player, shakes his head looking at the paper: "Registration is high, but actually getting on the pitch is another story." That statement reminds me of a recent analysis I read about Pakistan's fuel subsidy programme—where 1,493,848 tokens had been issued but only 655,067 people actually collected fuel. The conversion rate was just about 43.9%. Looking at the scholarship list in front of me, I suddenly realize: Vietnamese youth football is facing a similar paradox—registration is booming, but actual presence on the pitch is a completely different story. When discussing youth football development strategy in Vietnam, administrators often cite impressive numbers: a total of 12,500 young players were registered into VFF-affiliated training centres in 2026, up 23% from the previous year. Academies such as PVF, HAGL JMG, and Nutifood all announce new intakes with thousands of online applications. But when I filter the data on the number of young players who actually played 15 minutes or more in official competitions like the national U15, U17, U19 tournaments, the number drops to about 5,200—less than half. This reflects a reality: the system prioritizes the quantity of applications, camera-ready images for signing ceremonies, but lacks the mechanism to turn that registration into real playing opportunities. The lesson from Pakistan shows that a support programme, no matter how well designed, only has value when the final distribution stage works. In Pakistan's case, when the federal government issued fuel tokens via SMS, they thought the problem was just registration and issuance. But in reality, petrol stations were empty, the payment system was clogged, and many people in remote areas could not reach collection points. Now imagine the training grounds of Vietnamese youth football centres: hundreds of players are registered on a list, but the training pitches are cramped, the coaches are lacking, and friendly matches are reserved only for the starting lineup. Young players sit on the bench, just like Pakistanis holding tokens but unable to fill up their tanks. I want to delve into an aspect few people notice: the difference between "successful registration" and "real experience" in youth training centres. At a centre in the Central region, I once witnessed a trial session with 400 applications, but after the initial screening, only 45 kids were kept. Among them, after 6 months of training, only 12 played 10 or more matches that year. The question is: what does it mean that 588 of them never played a single official match? I don't deny the value of expanding the talent-discovery network, but if there's no accompanying strategy to ensure continuity in competition, those registration numbers are just an illusion. Pakistan's fuel subsidy programme was managed by a special committee, with the State Bank of Pakistan making direct payments to retail dealers. This is similar to how the VFF allocates budget to affiliated centres: money is transferred directly, but there is no mechanism to verify whether the players actually get on the pitch. Match logs are often handwritten, sometimes filled out merely as a formality. A coach at a Hanoi-based academy admitted to me: "We report the number of training sessions and matches based on lesson plans, but in reality, many training sessions were cancelled due to weather or because there weren't enough people." If Pakistan could discover that only 43.9% of tokens were used, then Vietnamese youth football needs a similar indicator: the ratio of young players who actually compete to the total number registered. Call it the "pitch time index"—and it should become the primary measure for the effectiveness of training centres. The data I collected from national youth tournaments over the past three seasons shows a worrying trend. The number of teams participating in the national U17 tournament rose steadily from 32 to 42 teams, but the number of young players who averaged more than 45 minutes per match only increased from 380 to 420. Meanwhile, the number of matches with a goal difference of 5 or more increased by 16%, suggesting that the quality of the weaker teams has even declined. This shows that increasing the number of teams does not go hand in hand with improving player quality. We are issuing "tokens" to more teams, but the ability to "fuel up"—that is, to train players who can actually perform well—is not keeping up. This is similar to the Pakistani government expanding eligibility to include Qingqi three-wheelers and vehicles registered before 2026, creating a huge number of applications but a distribution system that lacks capacity. The second paradox lies in the disproportionate benefit enjoyed by the big academies. PVF and HAGL JMG account for 52% of the total young players called up to the U15-U23 national teams in the last 5 years, yet they only account for 14% of total registered applications. Meanwhile, local centres with thousands of applications have not produced a single player reaching national team level. This is like the Pakistani subsidy programme: most tokens were issued to motorcycle riders (91.6%), but the fuel actually consumed was concentrated among the under-800cc vehicle group. In other words, having many applications does not mean having many talents. We need to look at the "conversion rate"—the number of players who actually reach high professional standards divided by the total number of registered applications. And this rate at local centres is extremely low. There's a point I want to counter against the prevailing optimistic view. The VFF proudly states that 1.25 million Vietnamese children participated in school football programmes in 2026. This figure comes from self-reported data from education departments and sports centres. But when I dig deeper into those reports, I see a contradiction: in a Mekong Delta province, the participation figure was 50,000, but the number of standard football pitches was only 12. That means each pitch would need to serve more than 4,000 children per week—which is impossible. Pakistan also claimed that "the overwhelming majority of petrol stations across the country were operational on the token system," but the steering committee simultaneously ordered the removal of permanently closed or diesel-only outlets. This shows that self-reported numbers are usually far more optimistic than reality. I'm not saying that the VFF is intentionally falsifying data, but I believe that a cross-check mechanism between actual matches and administrative reports is almost non-existent. Another important detail in the Pakistan story is the role of timely payment. When the State Bank of Pakistan committed to settling all dealer reimbursement claims within 24 hours, petrol stations began to trust and fully participate. In Vietnamese youth football, "payment" is not money but playing opportunities. If a training centre registers a player in the system, but official tournaments are not organized regularly, then the trust of parents and players will collapse. I witnessed many families in a Central province withdrawing their children from a centre because after two years, the child had only played 3 unofficial friendly matches. Meanwhile, centres in Ho Chi Minh City have a packed match schedule thanks to good relationships with local clubs. This inequality is no different from people in remote areas of Pakistan not having a petrol station nearby to use their tokens. The Pakistan story also teaches us a lesson about fraud risk management. The Pakistani government had to issue a warning about sharing personal data during SMS registration, because there was a risk of scammers exploiting it. In Vietnamese youth football, I see a similar problem: centres can inflate the number of players to receive funding from the VFF or sponsors. A former youth team coach told me that some centres list 200 players to receive support money, but in reality only about 50 train regularly. This reminds me of my own saying: "Transfer secrets are so heavy that I had to carry them around for two days before I knew how to put them down." The secrets in youth football are not carried by anyone, so they just lie in financial reports without anyone verifying them. But I don't want to just point out problems without suggesting a new way of thinking. Let's look at the concept of "conversion rate" as a governance tool. If each training centre had to publish three numbers: (1) the number of applications, (2) the number of players who maintained training for more than 6 months, (3) the number of players who played more than 500 minutes of official competition in the season, then we would have a clear picture. In Pakistan, if they had only released the number of tokens issued, they would never have known that their programme was only running at 43.9% efficiency. But because they published both the number of tokens issued and the number of people who actually received fuel, policymakers began to look for remedies. They were asked to provide lists of operating stations from the provinces and territories, and to implement a fast payment system to retain dealers. This shows that publicly releasing implementation data, even if uncomfortable, is the first step to improving efficiency. Vietnamese youth football cannot continue to be satisfied with SEA Games gold medals while neglecting to build a transparent index for development. Another bottleneck is the coordination between central and local authorities. In Pakistan, the national committee approved corrective measures like free SMS registration, but still had to wait for beneficiary lists from provinces and territories such as Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. These provincial governments gave no response, making the solution impossible to implement on time. In the Vietnamese youth football system, a similar dependency exists: the VFF issues training programmes, but the local departments of culture and sports manage the centres. When a province does not cooperate, the players there are left behind. I can tell the story of a young player in Dak Lak, a talent discovered through a grassroots tournament, but who was not able to compete at national level for 2 years because the local centre failed to submit his paperwork in time. By the time his paperwork was approved, the boy was already too old. That is an unacceptable waste. There is a common belief that just throwing money at facilities will develop youth football. But my experience covering the K-League and Korean teams gives me a different perspective: what creates good players is not beautiful pitches or modern gyms, but the number of high-quality matches they play during their development. Korea has a continuous youth league system from U12 to U18, with a packed match calendar all year round. An average young Korean player plays 40 matches per year, while a young Vietnamese player of the same age plays only about 15 matches, if lucky. There's no magic technology—just a difference in real playing opportunities. When I shared this figure with a technical director at a major academy, he nodded and said: "We know, but organising more tournaments requires funding and staff. We don't have enough." This comes back to budget priorities: we are willing to spend tens of billions of dong on opening ceremonies, but not on running regular youth tournaments. What would happen if we applied Pakistan's "immediate payment" approach to youth football? Instead of allocating fixed annual budgets, the VFF could build a performance-based bonus fund based on "pitch time." Specifically, each official match verified through an online registration system for a young player would correspond to a certain amount of funding for the centre. If a centre wants to receive more budget, they must prove that their players actually compete. This would eliminate the problem of inflated numbers and create an incentive for centres to actively seek matches for their pupils. This model has been successfully applied in several European countries, where academies receive FIFA training compensation only when their players play. Why don't we try a Vietnamese version? I remember one afternoon at Incheon United's training ground when I interviewed a young player who had just made his first-team debut. He told me he left his family at 13, lived in the club dormitory, and trained six days a week. When I asked what helped him through those difficult days, he replied: "Because the coach told me that as long as I got on the pitch, everything would be fine." That statement is simple but contains a truth: getting on the pitch is the only fuel that can sustain a young player's dream. Without it, every scholarship, every training course, every groundbreaking ceremony is just a token that never gets converted into fuel. When I read analyses of Vietnamese youth football, I see many discussions about tactical philosophy, about teaching methods, but very few discussions about a simple number: how many matches does a young player actually play each year? If I could propose one metric for the coming season, I would ask all Vietnamese youth football centres to publish their "pitch time index." Let's stop asking "How many children have registered?" and start asking "How many children have played 90 minutes or more in an official match?". Pakistan has learned that real presence is the true measure of success, and they are adjusting their programme accordingly. They pay dealers within 24 hours, they remove inactive stations, they enforce measures to get accurate lists from provinces. If a government can act that decisively for a fuel programme, then why can't a football federation do the same for youth training centres—where timeliness can change the fate of a generation of players? I'm not saying we should copy Pakistan's model, but we can learn how they used data to discover the gap between goals and reality. Vietnamese youth football is standing at a golden opportunity with strong investment from sponsors, but if we don't soon change how we measure success, we will continue to waste young talents sitting on the bench, holding the registration card of a dream that never gets ignited on the pitch. Let us remember the history of Vietnamese football: the successes at the SEA Games or AFF Cup all came from a generation of players who had played a lot from a young age. Cong Phuong came from the HAGL Arsenal JMG academy—where he played hundreds of matches in youth tournaments. But after that, HAGL's next generation could not maintain the same achievements, partly because they didn't have the same number of matches. When I interviewed a former assistant coach at the academy, he said: "We trained very well, but when entering tournaments, our players lacked confidence and match awareness. They didn't know how to handle pressure because they didn't have enough experience." This reminds me of another of my own sayings: "An empty stadium doesn't make a team disappear. It just turns the applause into a memory." In the youth football context, a stadium without fans can be an advantage—it creates a pressure-free environment for young players to learn. But to do that, they need to be placed in real matches, even if those matches have no spectators. Finally, I want to return to the Pakistan story. Why can a fuel subsidy programme teach us about youth football? Because it shows the nature of every distribution system: people are often swept away by flashy input numbers while forgetting the quiet output numbers. Pakistan issued 1,493,848 tokens, but only 655,067 people came to fill up. When I look at the Vietnamese youth football system, I see a similar ratio: 1,250,000 children participated in school football programmes, but only 5,200 young players played in official competitions. That ratio is 0.4%. A very alarming figure. But it also carries hope: if we improve the last-mile distribution, if we get young players into more matches, then we don't need to increase budget or build hundreds of new pitches. We just need to use what we already have more efficiently. Pakistan didn't need to print more tokens, they needed to make petrol stations work better. Similarly, Vietnam doesn't need more grand registration programmes, we need to get the already-registered young players into real matches. The pitch time index is the measure of truth. Let our young people play football, not just be registered. And if we do that, Vietnamese football will not only have wins at the SEA Games, but also a sustainable foundation for the future. That is the message I want to send to all those holding the fate of Vietnamese youth football.