Asiad 20 Kickoff: Vietnam Women and U23 Play Before the Opening Ceremony, Yet No One Holds the Signal

On the morning of September 14, a friend in Hanoi sent me exactly one line: "What channel is the women's team on?". I opened the calendar. Two in the afternoon, Vietnam's women face Chinese Taipei in Group E. Five in the afternoon tomorrow, U23 Vietnam face Kuwait in Group C. I kept scrolling through familiar sports pages. Not a single line announcing where the matches would be broadcast.

I sat still. The Moscow rooming house had no window, yet every night I saw the World Cup shining through the slit of my pen. Seventeen years in this trade taught me that some matches are not watched with the eyes. I learned to hear the pitch with my heart, because reason had already spoken too many dull words. This time, the story lives in an unsigned signature.

Asiad 20 takes place in Aichi and Nagoya, Japan, opening on September 19. Football kicks off before the ceremony, a familiar tradition. Vietnam's women sit in Group E, opening at 14:00 on September 14 against Chinese Taipei. U23 Vietnam sit in Group C, opening at 17:00 on September 15 against Kuwait.

The Games gather 45 countries and territories, over 11,000 athletes, 43 sports and 469 events. Within that vast frame, Vietnamese football is the richest television morsel, because it is the only discipline with two national teams playing before the Games formally begin.

As of the morning of September 14, no Vietnamese broadcaster had announced ownership of Asiad 20 media rights. Per initial reporting, a Vietnamese entity was said to be close to closing the deal over a week ago. Since then, silence. The reason remains unclear.

In that same window, five Southeast Asian nations had secured rights one after another: Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines. Vietnam sits sixth in the region, and is the only country still outside the deal.

Media rights for an Asian Games edition belong to the event's rights owner, the Olympic Council of Asia and the host organizing committee; football is usually sub-licensed through the Asian Football Confederation. The unit for sale here is "Vietnam territory". This is a purely commercial transaction, entirely distinct from disciplinary or club-finance matters.

I have sat in many press rooms in Europe where people discuss rights as if discussing a stock. A buyer's revenue comes from three sources: advertising, subscriptions and sponsorship. When a deal closes right at kickoff, the advertising runway is compressed to nearly nothing. The price of the rights package is not the only variable deciding profitability; the timing of the close is the deadliest one.

A deal that was "close over a week ago and has since gone silent" carries two meanings: a disagreement over price or exclusivity terms, or a problem with cash flow and legal procedure. Both lead to the same outcome. The pressure at the end does not fall on the negotiator, but on the fan.

There is a paradox I want to name properly. Vietnam lacking rights while five neighbours already hold them reflects a valuation mismatch or a late-start problem. The market is still there, the fans are still there, the demand is still there; only the signature is not. Before, many major Vietnamese rights deals closed at the last minute and still succeeded. But a late success does not erase the cost of waiting.

In my working years, I once proposed a short film called "Football in Silence" about empty stadiums during the pandemic. The production house turned it down, saying there was no market. I made it anyway, with two friends. Four months in Lyon, I recorded wind, birds and echoes inside Groupama stadium during closed training sessions. From that I understood one thing: absence is also an entity with feelings. It is not loud, but it is heavy.

The stadiums of Aichi and Nagoya will be packed with Japanese fans. In Vietnam, if no broadcaster buys the rights, millions will sit before an empty screen. The roar rises inside my head. The stadium is empty, but memory has never been deserted.

This is where I must say something counter-intuitive. Vietnamese football in Asia is still often described with the phrase "top tier". One Asiad ago, we were seeded first for the first time. Yet the source article itself warns the other way: despite the seeding, the team is still not rated highly. Seeding is an administrative matter; real strength is another. The "top tier" label shapes an expectation, but that expectation is not underwritten by results, and even less by commercial infrastructure.

The biggest blind spot lies here. We talk endlessly about climbing the "top tier" of football, yet we are not ready at the "top tier" of broadcast rights. Five Southeast Asian nations have bought their rights. We are still waiting. The mismatch between sporting ambition and commercial execution is not unique to this occasion. It is the story of an entire ecosystem.

The good news is that a deal that was "close" can still close, tonight, tomorrow morning, or minutes before kickoff. If that happens, the story flips: from "ghost football" to an evening when the whole country sits before its screens.

But even if the deal closes, one thing remains. A late approach means many viewers may have to pay for a subscription slot instead of watching for free. In many countries, major sporting events are placed on a mandatory free-to-air list to protect public access. Japan has it, some European nations have it. Vietnam has no such mechanism for the Asian Games, and that is why a blackout can lawfully occur.

Sponsorship of the Vietnamese delegation faces the same risk. A brand pays to appear on air, and with no airtime, that investment evaporates. The worry does not belong only to viewers.

People call me a writer on the grass verge. All I do is record the ball's breathing before it rolls. That breathing, this time, is not on a Japanese pitch. It sits in an unsigned signature in Hanoi.

In English, this situation is called a "blackout". I think Vietnamese has a more accurate word: being left open.

Being left open means something other than loss. It is a gap that can yet be filled. A touch of the ball is an unfinished poem. The ball rolls away, but the writer stays. And the writer, like the viewer, will stay before a screen, whether or not that screen carries a picture.

Seventeen years around football taught me this. The greatest threat does not lie in a match. A match, unwatched, will still be played. The threat lies in collective memory - the way a generation of fans grew up around evenings with the whole family huddled before the television, the commentary, the sigh of relief drifting over the wall.

If the match is played with no one watching at home, we lose a layer of memory. And memory, as I learned over four months at Groupama stadium, cannot be bought back with any rights package.