Vietnamese Women's Volleyball: When Roster Depth Decides the Crown

Eleven forty-seven at night. The arena had emptied out. The court lights were still on, but only a few groups of reporters were left squatting on the wooden floor, scattered notes, cold rice boxes, and a half-opened beer crate someone had left behind. I sat there, sixty years old, my hands still shaking from shouting too much over the past two and a half hours. On my phone screen, the livestream from three former national players had already crossed nearly five thousand views — they were analyzing from home, and each of them felt they were inside the match. A sixty-year-old fan can still sprint a hundred meters after a winning point — that is just me.

But that night, what kept me awake was not a spike. It was a substitute who entered in the fourth set.

She was the twelfth player on the roster, sitting on the bench for three sets, a towel around her neck, her hand tapping a rhythm on her thigh. When the head coach called her name, she walked into a match where the team trailed one set to two. In the next twelve points, she scored four attacking points, two blocks, and one ace. The match turned. I turned to my Brazilian colleague sitting beside me — the one whose recording of a junior reporter's interview I would have to ask for the next morning, because after beer with my Brazilian colleague I had forgotten my assignment — and asked: "Does this remind you of our national semifinal last year?". He nodded, smiled, and poured more beer.

That was the moment I understood what I needed to write: this season, the title is not decided by the starting six. It is decided on the bench.

The ball flies at Lạch Tray, and I rewrite it with sweat, not ink. But this time, the sweat belongs to the one sitting outside the court.

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For many years in this job, I had a bad habit: at any arena, I would note the six names on court first, then look at who was on the bench. That habit came from the era when I wrote dry match reports, when Vietnamese women's volleyball had only one story to tell — the number-one setter served well, the middle blocker built a wall, the outside hitter carried the team. Whoever scored the most made the headlines.

But volleyball has changed. And this season, that change is clearest in a statistic almost nobody tracks: points scored when the star player is off the court.

I still remember a morning coffee with a veteran coach who once led a women's national team at the SEA Games. He said something I wrote straight into my notebook: "Vietnamese women's volleyball no longer lacks good attackers. It lacks someone who can come in and not make the team weaker.". That sounds simple, but it is a revolution in roster management.

To picture it, look at the structure of a high-level women's match. Each team's touches per set average around sixty to eighty, depending on serving pace. Every player on court participates in roughly fifteen to twenty defensive and offensive situations. In a five-set match lasting two hours, that workload compounds into fatigue only those who have stood on court can understand. And when fatigue arrives, errors appear not on beautiful plays but on ugly ones — a first pass off by a hand, a block a beat late, a spike grazing the block and flying out of bounds.

That is why roster depth becomes currency. A thin bench can play well for two sets, but by the third and fourth, when the opponent starts exploiting stamina, they collapse. A team that can rotate three or four positions without losing its attacking rhythm will keep its tactical structure to the final whistle.

I sat for a long time after the match reviewing the footage. And what I found forced me to abandon my old view.

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Core analysis: The three layers of depth

When a Vietnamese women's team enters a season, its depth is not a single number. It lives in three layers, each operating on its own logic.

Layer one: Positional depth — having at least two qualified players in each specialized role. In women's volleyball, the four most important positions are setter, outside hitter, middle blocker, and libero. The setter is the hardest to replace. A team can lack a strong attacker, but losing a setter who can direct play collapses the entire attacking system. I have seen this many times: when the number-one setter is injured or neutralized, the replacement often lacks the confidence to set the middle, leaving the team to attack only from the wings. The opponent reads it, pulls two blockers to the pins, and it is over.

This season, the stronger Vietnamese women's teams have begun fielding two genuine setters. This is a major step up from five years ago, when many teams had only one setter of real caliber and one nominal backup. The change did not come from a movement, but from competition in the national championship. When every team has tall foreign outside hitters, the team without a setter who can serve and control tempo gets crushed from the first set.

Layer two: Tempo depth — a concept I learned from a data-analysis colleague. Tempo here is not just playing speed, but the ability to change speed between rallies. A team deep in tempo can play fast in the first set, slow down in the second to conserve energy, then explode in the decisive set. A thin team cannot do this, because every tempo change requires substitutions, and substituting on a thin team means losing quality.

Watching recent matches of the top women's teams, I noticed a pattern: teams that win fifth sets usually have more than two players performing above their average efficiency across the match. Teams that lose fifth sets usually have only one player carrying the scoring load, and when she is neutralized or tired, nobody steps up. I call this the "one-player syndrome" — the chronic disease of women's volleyball teams lacking depth.

Layer three: Psychological depth — the hardest to measure, and the most important. A substitute entering without mental preparation will play tentatively for the first two or three points. But if she enters with the mindset "I belong here", the team does not lose confidence. The difference between these mindsets is not technique. It is team culture — how the coach treats the bench, how the captain communicates in the locker room.

I have a vivid memory of this. Years ago, I watched a women's team win a final with the decisive point scored by a substitute. Afterward, I asked if she was surprised. She said no, because the coach had told her before the match she would enter at a specific moment if the game unfolded as planned. She had prepared mentally for that moment all week. That is depth built by design, not luck.

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Where does Vietnamese women's volleyball stand in this picture?

Compared with the leading Asian women's volleyball nations — China, Japan, Thailand, South Korea — Vietnamese women's volleyball still lags in depth. Our national team can compete evenly with many regional sides, but in long, continuous tournaments like the SEA Games or continental qualifiers, stamina is often the weakness.

What is worth noting, however, is the change at club level. In the national championship, top teams have begun investing in their second unit. They no longer buy just one foreign outside hitter to score, but also a foreign setter to raise the quality of distribution. They no longer use substitutes only as emergency fixes, but build the bench as part of the tactics.

This may not show in the score sheet or the standings. But it appears in a very specific metric: points scored by players who did not start the first set. On many teams, this number is rising steadily season by season. And as it rises, so does their ability to win long sets.

I spoke with an assistant coach about how he builds his bench. He said: "We do not prepare a player to enter because of injury. We prepare a player to enter because of tactics.". That difference sounds small, but it is the whole story. When you prepare the bench as part of tactics, you train them for the exact situations they will face. When you prepare them as a fallback, you only train generic skills.

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The counterintuitive angle: Commercial value versus competitive value

This is where I want to speak plainly, because it touches a belief I have held through many years in this profession.

When people discuss the growth of Vietnamese women's volleyball, they often mention revenue, broadcasting rights, livestream views, and the brand image of stars. All of that matters. But if I had to pick one thing to explain why the women's national team can go further internationally, I would not pick commerce. I would pick bench depth.

Because in a volleyball match, everything is decided at moments sponsors do not see. They see the beautiful spike, not the off-target first pass that a substitute must chase with all her heart. They see the attacking star, not the player who serves the attack. And for many years, the competitive value of those who make victory possible has been priced below the commercial value of those named more often.

I do not oppose high pay for star players. On the contrary, I think they deserve more. But I oppose a team deciding who matters by looking at the stat sheet. This season, I have seen a few teams do the opposite: they reward substitutes based on actual contribution, not points scored. That is a sign of a maturing volleyball culture.

There is a small detail I love. After a five-set win, I saw the captain walk straight to the substitute who had just entered and say: "Today was thanks to you.". No camera filmed it. No sponsor recorded it. But that is exactly what Vietnamese women's volleyball must build if it wants to go further.

I also want to talk about how we treat young players. On many teams, young players enter only when the match is already decided. That treats players as a gift, not as a resource. To make roster depth truly sustainable, young players must enter during important moments, so they learn to play under pressure. Vietnamese women's volleyball does not lack young talent. What it lacks is room for them to breathe pressure.

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A story from an evening in Moscow

I tell this story not to show off, but to explain how I learned the importance of depth in women's sports.

In the summer of 2026, I was sent to Moscow to cover the World Cup. I remember arriving to record a press conference and leaving with a new list of friends. One of them was a Brazilian journalist covering women's football. We drank a lot of beer over many nights, talking a lot about how Brazilian women's football is organized. And what I remember most is when she said: "In Brazil, we do not lack stars. We lack the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth players. The ones who enter at minute seventy and still keep the team's rhythm.".

I sat silent for a long time. Because that was true not only of Brazilian women's football. It was true of Vietnamese women's volleyball.

The next morning, I opened my laptop and immediately wrote a piece on roster depth. I forgot to record the press conference of the France coach and had to ask a junior colleague for the recording. But that article remains one of the ones I am proudest of in my career.

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What I saw in the national championship this season

This past season, I followed almost every match of the leading group and the relegation-battle group. And what I saw was a very clear split.

The leading group had depth. They could rotate, change lineups mid-set without losing rhythm. When a player had a minor injury, they did not have to send her out in pain. When an outside hitter was neutralized, they had someone with a different attacking style to force the opponent to re-read the match.

The relegation group was the opposite. They had good individuals, but their rosters were so thin that one injury could collapse a season. And I have seen this happen too many times to call it coincidence.

What caught my attention most was not a specific win or loss, but how teams handled decisive sets. In fifth sets, when both sides are tired, the quality of substitutes becomes decisive. The team with a ready bench keeps its rhythm. The team without one loses structure and plays on instinct.

One evening, I sat beside a youth-team coach and asked what he thought. He said: "Modern women's volleyball has no room for solitary improvisation. If my number one does not play well, I need a number two to play well instead. But if my number ten does not play well, I need the whole team to play well.". He added that this requires training the bench as its own lineup, with its own tactics and its own belief.

I wrote that down. And I think it deserves to become the standard for any women's volleyball team that wants to go far.

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On injury and comeback

There is a trap I see many teams fall into, and I want to put it on the table plainly.

Load management — regulating match and training volume to reduce injury risk — is often spoken of as a courtesy. But on close inspection, it often serves the commercial and friendly-match calendar more than player health. When a team has a packed friendly schedule, they talk about "rotation" to protect players. But when the important season arrives, those "protected" players are pushed onto the court with a spike in workload.

This explains why many women's players returning from injury suffer recurring problems. It is not because medicine is poor, but because the timing of the comeback is decided by the calendar, not by the body. When a roster is thin, pressure to return players early increases. And when pressure rises, re-injury risk rises with it.

I spoke with several fitness specialists working with women's teams. They said the biggest difficulty is not building a recovery program, but protecting players from their own team. A team with good depth can more easily protect a returning player, because it does not depend on one individual. A thin team has no choice but to push the player out, and often justifies it by saying the player wants to play.

This is a hard vicious cycle to break. But I believe it can only be broken from the depth side. When you have more options, you have more patience. And patience, in women's sports, is a form of investment.

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A morning at the arena

I want to end this analysis with a very ordinary image, which, to me, symbolizes the entire season.

It was the morning before an important match. I arrived early to collect my press pass and happened to see the home team's training. While the starting six practiced attacking combinations, in the far corner of the court, a group of three substitutes trained separately. They practiced first passes, running positions, and combination plays as if they were an independent lineup. An assistant coach stood beside them, repeatedly reminding: "If you enter now, what do you do? If this ball drops, where do you stand?".

I watched for a long time. That is the image I call "the second lineup with a name". They have their own tactics, their own commander, their own belief. When they enter an official match, they do not step in as firefighters. They step in to take over.

That morning, I understood something three decades in the job had not fully taught me: women's volleyball does not win only with the players on court. It wins with the players off court. And those off court can only win if they are prepared to become the ones on court.

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Final thought

I am sixty years old. I have seen many seasons pass. I have seen teams win with one player, and I have seen teams win with a whole squad. After many years, what I believe firmly is this: the team that invests in its bench will be present in the decisive matches.

Vietnamese women's volleyball is at an important moment. The stronger clubs have begun to realize that roster depth is not only a matter of money, but of culture. It is the story of teaching a young player that she can enter at any moment. It is the story of a coach trusting the bench enough to give them real responsibility. And it is the story of us, the professionals, beginning to write about the plays not highlighted on the stat sheet.

What I want to see next season is not a new star. It is a second lineup strong enough to make the number-one star work harder to keep her place. And when that happens, Vietnamese women's volleyball will take a long step forward without needing a single goal.

At sixty, I still think of myself as the girl jumping wildly in the stands. But now I jump wildly for a substitute nobody remembered before the match. If Vietnamese women's volleyball learns to prepare its twelfth player, the crown will no longer be the dream of one individual. It will be the reality of a generation.