When the celebration of PRC National Day is to define the showdown - the upcoming Sino-Vietnamese confrontation

Two matches, no point.

This is the scenario of Vietnam after the two fixtures in September. Of course, the majority of Vietnamese supporters feel understandable. Vietnam's two first opponents were Saudi Arabia and Australia, two of Asia's top hegemons. Though some Vietnamese resented the results, believing it was truly unfair and did have a lot of sentiment to dislike refereeing officials.

On 7 October, Vietnam will play away from home, to face up China, the giant northern neighbour. China's situation is also no better, if not to say worse: it was slammed by Australia and Japan. The only difference is, Vietnam has a goal while China doesn't have even one. The game is recognised as a "home" game for the Chinese, but in reality, it will be scheduled in the United Arab Emirates, one of the countries that rollout Chinese vaccines by the majority during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sharjah, the upcoming venue, in particular, is a major recipient of Sinovac and Sinopharm's products.

Yet this time, the fixture is far more than a game. This led to an uneasy talk about the long-standing historical past between Vietnam and China, two Sinosphere nations but largely unfriendly to each other. This encounter has become somewhat a real opportunity to show how far Vietnamese football has progressed.

In the mind of so many Vietnamese people, China is the appearance of an imperialist state, a brain injected with the feeling of being the centre of the world, ruling with arrogance, forcing its tributary states to respect the empire. On one side, many Vietnamese do agree that China is a very influential nation, one of the world's oldest civilisations, with many famous ancient products from China became popular to the world. This made the relations between Vietnam and China deeply complicated: Vietnamese adopt elements of Chinese culture, but also resist any attempts by the middle kingdom to take over the country. In fact, no country suffers more invasions from China like Vietnam, hence the deep resentment against China.

Still, China, as I have been told, is a resolute superpower. It has invented many things that were later exported to the world. It's also the master of the Silk Road. During the height of the Tang dynasty, China was the biggest and most formidable empire, possessing large territorial controls and plenty of vassals. When the Ming dynasty came, it facilitated the most famous Silk Road of the sea. Qing dynasty, a Manchu-based regime, was heavily Sinicised despite its nomadic root. You must acknowledge that when it succeeded in becoming the world's largest superpower in the past, it will be doing the same process in the future. Even more remarkable when it was capable of turning many ethnicities into the orbit of China's order. Football is also widely recognised as originated from China, with the form of cuju, an ancient ball-kicking sport, by FIFA. Though...

Do you know that China's Forbidden City was designed by many architects, one of them was a Vietnamese named Nguyễn An? Do you remember that up until the expansion of the Han dynasty, the region belongs to modern-day Guangdong and Guangxi was once the land of the ancient Viet tribes? Do you know that the first leaders of Vietnam's independence movements against China were women in a hierarchical system favouring men? Do you know that the Ming Chinese captured and exiled many Vietnamese cannon builders when it took over Vietnam from 1407-1427? And many more...

All these historical problems provide the Vietnamese, especially nationalists, a sense of pride, nostalgia and grievance - and a way to contest outsiders viewing Vietnam's relations with China. The greatness of China is not to argue, but it is how Vietnam survived China's domination for over 1,000 years strengthen the belief of 95 million Vietnamese citizens.

Yet for the Chinese, Vietnam is just a miserable small southern neighbour that always feels jealous of China. Indeed, Chinese people are viewing South Korea, Japan and even Taiwan and the United States as increasing concerns, threats and competitors on China's quest to become the main middle kingdom, again. Every year, Chinese tourists prefer travelling to other rich nations in North America, Europe, Japan/Korea or maybe the Gulf kingdoms - Vietnam is nothing for them to contribute for. The trade deficit is also favouring China as the economy of China is the second-largest in the world. Even the Mỹ Đình National Stadium, built by a horrible Chinese constructor, also demonstrates the power China has on Vietnamese society. Even today, the majority of Vietnam's imports are Chinese, despite many of them are poor qualities.

In football, history is no different. Since the reintegration of Vietnam into the world's football in 1991, China has faced Vietnam seven times, all ended triumphantly for the middle kingdom. But meetings in the FIFA World Cup qualifiers, well, China has met Vietnam twice only, when the run to France 1998 ongoing. China beat Vietnam in Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City, 3-1; and winning the home fixture in Beijing 4-0. Though it could be emphasised by the time of Vietnamese football past: it was reintegrated in 1991, and just only began to learn to build semi-professional football, whereas China has turned professional since 1994. By contrast, Vietnam turned professional late, in the early 2000s. The most recent competitive battles were the 2011 AFC Asian Cup qualification, against ended with China grabbing the wins, 6-1 in Kunming and 2-1 in Hanoi.

It's no surprise that Chinese media is underscoring the overwhelming domination of China against Vietnam and even recalled sweet memories to rally the Chinese Team Dragons after two agonising losses to Australia and Japan. Goalkeepers like Wang Dalei even underestimated Vietnam openly, stating that China will use its height to overpower Vietnam.

Club football? Well, no different, too. China's Super League is one of the biggest leagues in Asia. China is far more powerful than Vietnam, which has a mediocre domestic league. The AFC's hierarchical system also ensures powerful nations with muscular financial muscles to take part in the AFC Champions League, an advantage China was able to get through. No surprise that clubs from Vietnam also suffered an inferior performance against clubs from China - with only one win and the remaining results are losses.

Since becoming the President of China in 2012, Xi Jinping was eager to foresee China as the dominant football superpower. He was unhappy when China has only one World Cup to state for, he wants more than one. Xi Jinping assembled business people across China to realise the football dream. Consequently, businessmen from China threw money, turning clubs into powerful tools to show China's economic power. Tons of international stars were lured away from Europe to seek fortunes in the middle kingdom. During the 2016-17 season, China's Super League was reaching its apex, when money appeared to be like an endless flood. One of the world's largest football schools is located in Guangzhou, south China, funded and built by Evergrande to materialise the long journey of a second World Cup appearance and to dominate the king of sports; many more football schools also take place in China during Xi's early reign.

Meanwhile, the V-League in Vietnam gets low points many times due to widespread corruption and mismanagement. Various clubs in Vietnam appeared, and folded or merged, seasons to seasons. Attempt to introduce professionalism so far has resulted in moderate successes, with two to three clubs have become self-reliant, but the far cry remains.

So, not a surprise that in the upcoming fixture, Vietnam will be regarded below China, and the bet is mostly for the Chinese to win again. Well, if you are only interested in seeing the bets and history, rather than the current development.

By 2021, however, the tide is turning. The Chinese Super League, after a decade of throwing money, is now facing a crisis, with clubs under cash crunch. One of the most painful of this was the disappearance of the Jiangsu F.C., once controlled by Suning, the retail conglomerate that owns Inter Milan. Jiangsu F.C. won the 2020 CSL season after beating Guangzhou F.C., controlled by another conglomerate, Evergrande (which is now the most indebted company in the world). After three months, the 2020 champions folded in shock due to unpaid wages. Many Chinese teams have struggled to pay off their debts since they have been dependant on money from the commercial groups rather than themselves. 16 teams from the three highest levels of the Chinese League pyramid have vanished. During the 2021 AFC Champions League, other teams were shocked to see Chinese participants sent youth teams instead of the main teams.

This came after Xi Jinping increasingly more assertive over the bubble named Super League. Could not accept seeing the deteriorating performance of the team, the CSL instructed all clubs to follow a stricter salary cap, as well as removing corporations from namesakes. But the instruction came too little, too late: too many clubs went to debts, many fell bankrupt and ceased operations. Currently, Evergrande Group, the giant Chinese estate corporation milking Guangzhou F.C., is also facing a tremendous amount of debt, which threatens the future of the most successful club in China.

This also transcends into the national team as well. The current generation of Chinese players are old, many are above thirty. To fight such issues, the Chinese government issued the naturalisation of foreign players, already spearheaded by the same estate group, but many are also old now. The national team, with the task to beat Australia and Japan to prove China's rise, has been taken back to the ground in total shame with defeats. To make it worse, China could not find the way to the nets of both, giving total shots to ten despite the presence of Brazilian and English-born footballers. Meanwhile, young talents have been ignored, causing a train crash on Chinese football development as the upcoming youngsters found it difficult to head into the national side. Wu Lei is one of China's few lights today, standing as one of Espanyol's footballers.

Evergrande Football School in Guangzhou is also facing a dire situation, when the schools are going empty, a trait shared by many football academies in China today, owing to the crisis within the CSL. The struggling Chinese team is also partially explained by this desertion.

To make it worse for China, the team was forced to play in the United Arab Emirates, in spite of claiming that China has vaccinated more than one billion people. This could be the lack of trust in vaccines made by the Chinese, already under scrutiny due to low standards; also due to Beijing's policy of two-week quarantine regulation which prevented visitors from coming. Thus, the match in Sharjah will be held with no spectator.

This meant that the match against Vietnam was a do-or-die order. With the crisis of internal football looming days and nights, Team Dragons' players are in a chaotic situation, especially Guangzhou F.C.'s men, over eight players from the club are within the team. A recent meeting was authorised by manager Li Tie in order to put the team back to order. Questions have also increased about naturalised players, many accepted Chinese citizenship only because of the offers to represent China for wealth. The pressure is truly doubling when China's hope to tell the world it is capable to compete for a World Cup spot, was hurt by yet its own incompetence.

Vietnam? She is still working for days and nights in order to achieve a historic win against the Team Dragons. The newly-built generation of Vietnam is more enthusiastic since players of Vietnam this time has been built totally from the grassroots. Of course, I did mention that V-League is still plenty of problems - many Vietnamese clubs are still being run by corporates rather than by passionate fans, akin to the CSL. Yet a number of Vietnamese clubs are increasingly aware that the Chinese methods will only land to disaster, as experienced by their own. thus growing to nurture their own players. The best football school in Vietnam currently is located in Pleiku of the Central Highlands, called Hoàng Anh Gia Lai Academy, which facilitated most of the current generation. By the same group of few professional clubs in Vietnam, a new generation of talents emerged. Nguyễn Quang Hải, by far the hottest prospect of Vietnamese football, came from Hanoi F.C. academy, one of the only rare professional academies in Vietnam.

Vietnamese footballers also have to experience more hardship, something absent in Chinese counterparts today. When Chinese footballers live in the mountain of money with salaries sometimes reaching millions of dollars, Vietnamese footballers were forced to take an even more troubling run, with financial scarcity and impoverished families. Yet poor backgrounds have made names for many famous footballers, such as Robert Lewandowski, Sadio Mané, Romelu Lukaku, Jorginho, Zlatan Ibrahimović, Alexis Sánchez, Keylor Navas, Mohamed Salah, Keisuke Honda, Neymar and Ángel di María; even Pelé had a very impoverished past. This time, it really made a team.

The biggest value that Vietnam will surely proceed ahead of China is, still, the human beings. As Chinese football officials treat footballers with the will of turning them into robots, for once forcing players to use Adidas boots only in accordance to the shirt sponsor, to even thinking that the might of its imperialistic ancestors meant they should impose order to control on everyone, normal Vietnamese people have grown to realise this anti-humanism. Of course, that doesn't mean I can say the Vietnamese officials really understand since the Communist Party of Vietnam draws its authoritarian inspiration from China, but Vietnamese people differ from the Chinese in that sense of feeling morality and human beings. This is what the current Korean manager of Vietnam, Park Hang-seo, wanted to send a message about the feelings of humans, the feelings of the common, unlike the military-like isolation of the Chinese side, which Li Tie's Chinese squad only comes training and returns with little activities.

Interestingly, the encounter between Vietnam and China in Sharjah will happen on 7 October. This is also the last day of the one-week celebration of the foundation of the modern People's Republic of China. The PRC, established October 1st 1949 by dictator Mao Zedong, has long since considered the National Day as a day of rebirth of the Chinese nation. Probably the rise of China is also worth welcoming, but for a country ambitious of being the only sole ruler, lack of success in football today is a humiliating decline. No wonder state-run media in mainland China has declared the battle against Vietnam a must-win encounter - it will be a total down under if China loses to Vietnam in an important moment.

We'll never know. But for a long, long history of wars between the two neighbours, October 7th will be the turning point. Who knows, is China going to reassert its might, or will the Vietnamese emerge victoriously and change the outcome?