Over 40 Minutes in the Hàng Đẫy Dressing Room: What Coach Kewell Admitted After the Sông Lam Nghệ An Defeat

I was standing outside the Hàng Đẫy gate when the clock had already passed 22:15. The Hanoi FC bus was still idling, its yellow lights spilling across the empty road, but no one stepped on board. Inside the dressing room, the door had been shut for more than forty minutes. Reporters waiting outside the press room glanced at each other, phones buzzing, everyone guessing. When coach Harry Kewell finally walked out, the clock was creeping toward 21:40 — nearly an hour behind schedule. He spoke briefly. Asked about the extended meeting, he offered a line I have heard many times in English football: whatever happens in the dressing room stays in the dressing room. Yet he then admitted there was an 'issue between me and the team' that had to be resolved. To someone who follows a club for a living, that is not a line meant to paper over things. It is a signal, spoken aloud by the man at the centre of it. The 1-4 defeat to Sông Lam Nghệ An at home was Hanoi's second consecutive loss in V-League 2026-2027. Before that, Kewell's side had fallen 1-3 to Công An TP.HCM on the opening matchday. Seven goals conceded in two matches, including a heavy home loss at Hàng Đẫy — a ground long regarded as the capital's fortress — is a figure that forces anyone following the V-League to stop and look closer. What makes the story heavier is this: Hanoi entered the season as a heavy investor. They brought in signings the media labelled 'blockbusters', and arranged a long training camp in Thailand. When a club spends big, expands its squad, and still loses its first two games, no one talks about luck anymore. They talk about cohesion. I have spent years standing on training grounds watching how a big club knits together. There is something data cannot measure: the time it takes for new people to learn to trust one another. A long camp can build fitness, can test formations, but it cannot buy understanding in a split second. And at Hàng Đẫy, that split second is missing. Sông Lam Nghệ An walked into that match with a squad described as 'all young players'. They carry nothing like the host's investment. They come from a different model: developing, bonding, believing in each other. The result was 4-1 on the road. If I had to pick one place to begin, I would pick the defence. Seven goals in two games is not merely about a goalkeeper standing in the wrong place or a defender tracking loose. It signals a system that has not taken shape. When a team concedes four at home to a young opponent, the cause usually lies in transition — the moment possession is lost and the moment bodies must drop back. New players are not yet reading each other; gaps open in positions that did not exist last season. I once followed a major club for six straight months, noting in detail a star's every warm-up movement. I learned that a top player always has his own ritual, and that ritual helps him find balance. But a personal ritual can never replace a collective one. At Hanoi right now, I see no collective ritual clear enough. The team has individuals, but not yet a shared rhythm. What does a meeting lasting more than forty minutes in the dressing room mean? In my experience, when a coach keeps a whole dressing room that long after a heavy defeat, the problem he faces is usually not purely tactical. Tactics can be dealt with in the next morning's video session, with a whiteboard and a projector. Keeping people back for nearly an hour, once the match is over and everyone just wants to go home, is to talk about attitude, about responsibility, about matters that cannot be written on a tactics board. Kewell himself admitted as much. He said there was an 'issue between me and the team' and that he 'would have to resolve it'. A coach does not use that phrasing if everything is only about a formation. This is a relational problem — and in football, relational problems are far harder to cure than tactical ones. Notably, Kewell chose the language frame of English football: what happens in the dressing room stays in the dressing room. That is a fine principle, but it is also a curtain. For a foreign coach working in the V-League, applying it may be a way of protecting the team, but it may also signal that he is trying to seal the story before it leaks. I have wrestled with this question myself while working at major tournaments: when is a coach's silence protection, and when is it concealment? It is not always easy to tell. Look at the small details around the match. The team bus kept its engine running until 22:15. Players climbed aboard with gloomy faces, a few forcing a smile — the kind of unnatural smile I have learned to recognise. At elite level, a forced smile after a heavy defeat is often a sign of internal tension being bottled up. People smile so that no one has to say what they are thinking. And the positive side deserves attention too: a group of fans still waited at the gate to encourage the team. That is a valuable counter-signal. The pressure on Hanoi right now, at least at this moment, comes from within and from the media, not yet from supporters turning their backs. It means Kewell still has a buffer — short, but real. Now, about the investment. Hanoi spent money on 'blockbuster' signings and a long training camp in Thailand. Spending heavily in pre-season does not automatically produce results. But it produces expectation. And in football, expectation is a form of pressure with its own weight. When a team wins, people call it smart investment. When it loses, the same money becomes evidence for the prosecution. What I want to emphasise: when a big club spends but results do not come, the pressure usually falls on the coach, rarely back on the recruitment department. Kewell is the one who pays first. But the question that should really be asked is: how long do those blockbuster signings need to knit into the playing style? And does this season allow enough time for that process? At Hanoi, the phrase 'hot seat' has become part of the story. The club's own history shows that the coaching chair here has never stayed warm for long. In such an environment, a coach must not only teach football. He must win fast. There is a reading of this story that I think many are falling into: treating two defeats as proof of a completed crisis. I do not think so. Two matches is far too small a sample to conclude anything about a season. The worry is not the number two, but the manner of defeat — a heavy home loss, and a coach who needed nearly an hour to dismiss a meeting with his players. Another reading is worth weighing: this story, in the end, is a clash between two philosophies of building a team. One buys stars; the other develops and bonds. Sông Lam Nghệ An won 4-1 away with a young squad. That is not yet a verdict on the star-buying model, but it is a reminder: money can buy players, but it cannot buy understanding in a single afternoon. One detail I consider more important than anything said in the press conference: the team stayed at the ground longer than the bus waiting for them. In my trade, time is a form of evidence. When things go smoothly, people leave quickly. When something is wrong, they stay. In football, I believe what happens on the training ground tomorrow will say more than any press conference. If the starting line-up changes in defence, if a few senior players are left on the bench, if Kewell appears with a different expression, that is a signal he is reclaiming control. And if everything returns to the same, after another defeat, the hot seat at Hàng Đẫy will no longer be warm — it will catch fire.