Earning Its Stripes
Draped in banners and clutching a host of Vietnamese flags, Tran Duc Loi, 21, earnestly repeated his mantra to anyone who would listen: “We will win. We will win.”
If there is a national religion here in this Communist state, it might well be soccer.
And die-hard fans are in the throes of ecstasy as opening ceremonies begin today for the Tiger Cup, the biennial two-week soccer championship for Southeast Asian countries.
T-shirts and sports banners are flying out of stores. Businesses near the 20,000-capacity stadiums in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi where the games will be played are reporting boom times.
“People have soccer fever,” said sports commentator Trinh Long Vu of Vietnam Television. “If Vietnam beats Laos [in the opening match], thousands of people will take to the streets. You’ll see. Everybody is crazy about football here.”
Despite all this interest, Vietnam has no professional soccer leagues; the national team is chosen from ranking amateurs. Vietnamese officials have pledged ticket revenues toward developing domestic soccer.
Among the sport’s fans are Prime Minister Phan Van Khai, who visited Vietnam’s national players at their training center over the weekend and told them in a pep talk: “The gains of the Vietnamese team will be the gains of this country.”
Vietnam had only two months’ notice to organize the eight-country event after turmoil in Indonesia and Malaysia scrapped plans to hold the tournament in those countries.
Eager to prove to its regional neighbors that it can handle its first large-scale sporting event, Vietnam has been scrambling to repaint, refurbish and even rebuild parts of the two dilapidated stadiums to bring them up to international standards.
The government already has spent more money on the renovations than the $400,000 subsidy provided by Tiger Cup organizers. So far, $100,000 has been spent on upgrading Ho Chi Minh City’s Thong Nhat Stadium, and $500,000 has been spent on replacing the crumbling infrastructure of Hanoi’s national stadium.
Other items normally taken for granted in sporting venues--electronic scoreboards, coaches’ dugouts, locker rooms and telecommunications links--had to be bought or built.
Sponsoring officials of the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations and the Asian Football Confederation were a little leery of moving the tournament to Vietnam, said Kenny Hau, an AFC marketing executive.
“We had concerns about their ability to manage this, but they’ve impressed us with their determination to pull this together,” he said.
That’s hardly surprising, given that soccer is nothing less than a national obsession.
The weeks surrounding the World Cup earlier this year took on the euphoric feel of Tet, the Lunar New Year, when much of the country shuts down for celebrations.
Devotees faithfully followed live matches that ran through 4 a.m. In a nation where sports bars don’t exist, street cafes improvised by renting large-screen TVs.
Enterprising types rented out newspapers by the hour to students too poor to buy a regular paper but frantic to read the latest scores. Authorities reported increased traffic accidents by sleep-deprived drivers and more orderly prisons where TVs had been installed.
Employers were warned by Viet Nam News, a state-run paper, that “you should be prepared to put up with a month of reduced productivity and drowsy staff that went to bed at 4 a.m.”
Whether the Tiger Cup will generate similar levels of excitement remains to be seen. Thailand’s team, the 1996 winner, is the odds-on favorite for the $80,000 prize, but Vietnam, which finished third two years ago and is being led by new Austrian Coach Alfred Riedl, has the home advantage.
“If we make it to the finals, I’ll be satisfied,” sportscaster Vu said. “Of course, if we win, it’ll be a dream come true.”
Today’s opening ceremony, complete with a laser show and dance extravaganza, marks the first live broadcasting of an international sports event from Vietnam, with satellite feeds to Thailand, Singapore, Cambodia and ESPN in the United States.
About 4,000 international fans, mainly from Thailand, Singapore and Laos, are expected to fly in for the tournament. Security has been visibly tightened in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi.
Tickets are scarce, with only 3,000 of the 20,000 seats per game available to the public. The rest are reserved for government officials, state-owned and private companies and foreign visitors.
Intense demand makes for a lively black market here, with tickets being hawked for more than 10 times their relatively cheap face value, if they can be found at all.
Most fans like Loi, who had skipped university classes to join cheering friends in the shade of Hanoi’s stadium, will be left rooting for their teams through television, which is perfectly fine with them.
“Only old people watch it in the stadium,” Loi said. “I’ll be watching it on TV. It will be just like the World Cup again.”
