National Cup: Becamex TP.HCM beat Thanh Hoa 2-0 with a low block and two rehearsed moments

In the 34th minute at Thanh Hoa's ground, Vo Hoang Minh Khoa placed the ball by the corner flag, glanced into the box once, and curled it with the inside of his foot. The trajectory bent away from goal — the kind of delivery that forces the goalkeeper to retreat and the back line to turn their bodies, leaving an attacker needing only one touch. The ball went in, and Becamex TP.HCM led the V.League 1 hosts. That goal carried the marks of a routine repeated on the training pitch, rather than a random moment.

In the 83rd minute, Nguyen Tran Viet Cuong broke the offside trap, exchanged a one-two with a teammate and finished, sealing a 2-0 scoreline. Two goals, two different mechanisms, both inside a script prepared in advance. For a second-tier side playing away against a V.League 1 club, that is the most viable road there is, and they chose it correctly.

Context before kick-off

Thanh Hoa hosted Becamex TP.HCM in the National Cup as the home side and the club from the higher division. But administrative status and on-field resources have diverged. The club from Thanh Hoa province had just escaped a financial crisis and must now concentrate its resources on the V.League 1 relegation battle. Becamex TP.HCM are the opposite: relegated last season, yet heavily invested, with quality foreign players and a striker currently in the national team squad.

Coach Gerard Albadalejo brought to the away ground a squad many in the game consider too good for the First Division. Based on my experience following Becamex matches since the start of the season, the notable part lies elsewhere: they do not try to play beautiful football to prove their class. They play the football that fits the result they need.

The anatomy of the match

Becamex ceded the game. They accepted abandoning the midfield, dropped their block, defended solidly around the 16m50 area and waited for exactly two moments to strike back.

The first moment was the set piece. Thanh Hoa defended corners with man-marking, and Becamex exploited the inherent weakness of that approach: a ball curving away from goal forces the entire back line to turn their backs on the drop zone. Vo Hoang Minh Khoa — the captain, entrusted with dead balls — executed it to the centimetre. When a team lets its captain stand over the corner flag in a cup tie, that is a sign they have already worked out how the match will be decided.

The second moment was the transition. Thanh Hoa held the ball, pushed their line higher in search of an equaliser, and every time they lost possession in the opposition half, Becamex found space behind the defensive line. By the 83rd minute, the offside trap the hosts had set was broken by Viet Cuong with a perfectly timed run: he started half a beat later than the defender, received the ball unmarked, and finished with a tidy one-two. In the 83rd minute of a cup tie, holding the concentration to time a run that precisely is the quality of a national-team-level forward.

Thanh Hoa's problem was never attitude. It was structure. This is the classic disease of a favourite facing a low block: plenty of possession, occupation of the opposition half, but no mechanism to break through. No player capable of creating something out of nothing in the middle, no crossing option dangerous enough to force Becamex to push their block up. When the hosts committed men forward for the equaliser, they inadvertently handed back exactly the space their opponent was waiting for.

I watch matches differently from a league table: I record how a team reacts after falling behind. Here, Becamex reacted by dropping deeper and growing more patient. There was no sign of panic from the away side for the rest of the match.

Where I could be wrong

I have to scrutinise myself before concluding. The sample here is one match, and a knockout tie is the worst kind of data on which to build a judgement. I have no xG, no PPDA, no touches-in-the-box count, no shot map. What I have is a description of events, and descriptions of events are always distorted by the final score. Had the 34th-minute corner swung out instead of in, we might be reading a completely different piece about a First Division side wasting its chances.

I also do not believe the story local media are suggesting: that an early cup exit is good for Thanh Hoa. That is expectation-management language. Reducing the fixture load is real, saving travel costs is real, but the entire weight of the season now rests on V.League 1 — meaning pressure will rise, not fall. If the next four to six rounds do not go better, that story will be re-read in a different light.

And one more thing: Becamex beat a V.League 1 side in crisis, not a healthy V.League 1 side. The dependence on two sources of goals — Minh Khoa's corners and Viet Cuong's runs — is an unverified weak point. Against a back line that man-marks at set pieces and refuses to push up, they will have to solve a different problem.

When I wrote about the 3-6-1, I was not picking a fight – I was describing what the whole stadium was denying. Not long ago, a lower side's low block was called negative football. Now it is called tactics. The label changes; the data stays where it is. The 2026 World Cup mistake taught me: every football opinion is a long game against myself. I once declared that no team wins a World Cup with only 45% possession, and I was torn apart for it. I am never confident in my pre-match judgements – I am only confident in my doubts.

What to watch

Becamex TP.HCM have shown they can win without playing beautifully. If Viet Cuong maintains a steady scoring run and Vo Hoang Minh Khoa remains a set-piece specialist, this club can be placed among the genuine promotion contenders. As for Thanh Hoa, their real test lies in the next four to six V.League 1 rounds. If their position does not improve over that stretch, the story that an early exit was good for them will turn into evidence of a deeper problem.