Why is the Hanoi Police Club's performance opposite?

The early stages of the 2025 - 2026 season witnessed two contrasting appearances of Hanoi Police Club when participating in regional, continental and domestic competitions.

Le Van Do disappointed despite being given many opportunities to show his ability at Hanoi Police Club - Photo: NGOC LE

In just over a month since the start of the new season, Hanoi Police Club has shown two contrasting faces, between their form in the V-League and their performance in the AFC Champions League Two and ASEAN Club Championship.

Contrasting performance

In V-League, Hanoi Police Club is currently second in the rankings with 10 points after a series of 4 unbeaten matches.

At the Southeast Asian Cup, Hanoi Police Club lost 1-2 to BG Pathum, before narrowly winning 1-0 against Cebu in the last minute.

At AFC Champions League Two, Hanoi Police Club drew 2-2 with Beijing Guoan.

The domestic and international matches of Hanoi Police Club are only a few days apart, but despite playing with the same lineup, this team cannot have the same playing style and results.

It is worth mentioning that the level of their international opponents is only at the mid-level, even easy to play, and not at the top level of the continent like Japan and Korea.

BG Pathum is just a mid-level Thai team, currently in the middle of the Thai League rankings. Beijing Guoan is similar. They did not even field their strongest lineup to play against Cong An Ha Noi because they prioritized the domestic arena. Cebu FC comes from a country that does not consider football to be the king of sports and is considered the weakest in the group of coach Alexandre Polking and his team.

The common point in all 3 matches against Pathum, Beijing and recently Cebu, Hanoi Police Club all had the lead, controlled the ball well, but in 2 matches they could not maintain the results.

In the match against Pathum, Hanoi Police Club lost from a goal down, and in the match against Beijing, the Vietnamese representative was behind 1-2 until the end of the match and struggled to equalize the score to 2-2. In the match against Cebu, Mr. Polking's team played a deadlocked game and was almost held to a 0-0 draw by their opponent if it weren't for Cao Quang Vinh's brilliance in the 89th minute.

What is the reason?

First of all, we need to sympathize with Hanoi Police Club as this is only their fourth season since they were promoted to V-League in 2023. The cohesion between players, traditional values, experience and mettle of a newly promoted team when competing in the international arena are still limited.

That is why even though there were good times to attack and score, this team still let the opponent score and could not preserve the result.

Nguyen Filip is just a victim of a young tactical system - Photo: NGOC LE

Nguyen Filip’s two mistakes in the draw with Beijing are an example. Why did Filip rarely make elementary mistakes during his career in Europe but when he joined the Hanoi Police Club, he continuously left behind consequences? The answer is the team’s incomplete tactical system.

The second reason is the poor preparation of the Hanoi Police Club before the season. For comparison, let's look at Nam Dinh Club, which also participated in the Asian and Southeast Asian Cups as a representative of the police industry.

If Nam Dinh bought dozens of foreign players, including famous names who played in the Premier League and European Cup, then Hanoi Police Club only brought in 1-2 normal names, such as Stephan Mauk (Australia), or Adou Minh (Ha Tinh).

Playing in 3 arenas with only 1 squad that is not deep enough, the burden on the key players is predictable. This explains why the main striker Alan Grafite is not playing consistently, Quang Hai and Viet Anh are overloaded or injured.

Despite their efforts, Hanoi Police Club was very unlucky in all three matches. So we should sympathize with the team when they missed many scoring opportunities.

The 2025 - 2026 season is still very long, Hanoi Police Club needs to clearly define the goals and priority arenas to get good results in the near future.

Back to topic

NGOC LE

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/vi-sao-clb-cong-an-ha-noi-vi-sao-phong-do-trai-nguoc-20250925095225997.htm