Southeast Asia Vietnam

Sai Gon Goes Bust Three Years After Challenging for Title

Valentine’s Day 2023 was a day to forget for Sai Gon FC fans, as their beloved club has officially shut down for good following their failure to register for the 2023 V.League 2 season following relegation from the top-flight last year. The club has been enduring severe financial troubles since finishing third in the 2020 season and these issues became too much for the men in pink to handle after their relegation.

Sai Gon’s “revolutionary plans” of implementing a J.League-style model at the club in the 2021 0ff-season – which saw them jettisoning key players from their successful 2020 campaign – can be easily pointed out as the turning point where things start to turn to mush for the men in pink, but truthfully Sai Gon’s downfall was a potent combination of said overambition, the COVID-19 pandemic, and a real estate crash within the Vietnamese market.

An article made by Nguyen-ball in his Substack page showcased the goings on behind the scene at Sai Gon FC since their relocation from Hanoi early in the 2016 V.League 1 campaign. Underneath the ownership of both the Him Lam Group and the Ben Thanh Group – giants in the Vietnamese real estate market, Sai Gon finished 3rd in the 2020 season, having challenged for the title for most of the campaign and with two of that season’s best players in Geovane and Pedro Paulo. Sai Gon also took control of the famous PVF Academy from another Vietnamese conglomerate in Vingroup, before embarking on their aforementioned J.League revolution that was made on the back of a partnership deal signed with J.League 1 giants FC Tokyo.

However, letting go of most of your key players and replacing them with a mix of inexperienced youngsters and aged has-beens wasn’t the wisest of ideas and Sai Gon found themselves marooned at the foot of the V.League 1 table in 2021, but the worst was yet to come for the men in pink.

The COVID-19 pandemic thankfully ended Sai Gon’s miserable season and they were allowed to fight for another day as the league was abolished midway through the campaign, however the real estate market suffered a huge blow in 2022 due to numerous uncertainties – the pandemic, the geopolitical conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and the Fed hike rate. The real estate sector in Vietnam was in a real quagmire in 2022 with numerous tycoons within the business being arrested for alleged stock market manipulation and insurance fraud, leading to others cutting their losses and letting go of their non-profit economic sectors to avoid legal risks.

Both the Him Lam Group and Ben Thanh Group were examples of real estate companies cutting their losses in the 2022 crisis, handing over the PVF Academy to the Ministry of Public Security (the very agency going after their misbehaving fellow tycoons) before transferring the ownership of Sai Gon to Novaland, another real estate company based in the South of Vietnam. While it is unknown why Novaland was more than willing to take control of Sai Gon despite the messed up state of the Vietnamese real estate market, the new owners immediately went into action and injected huge sums of money into the Sai Gon squad in an effort to stave off the threat of relegation.

However, the collapse of the Vietnamese real estate market reached Novaland and their stocks plummeted, with a number of their projects being investigated by the authorities. With its owner losing up to USD 1 billion worth of assets in less than a month, Novaland and Sai Gon were bleeding profusely. Players and staff members went unpaid, which led to a few of them going on strike, and although Sai Gon won their final game of the 2022 season – a 2-1 home triumph over Becamex Binh Duong – head coach Phung Thanh Phuong voiced his concerns that his club might cease to exist sooner than later.

And Thanh Phuong’s words rang true on February 14th, 2023. With all of their players having left the club, with barely any money inside their accounts, and with only their name being accounted for, Sai Gon failed to register themselves for the 2023 V.League 2 season alongside Can Tho FC. And whilst fellow financially-stricken club Can Tho had a more fortunate outcome – being relegated several levels down to the Third Division, the same could not be said for Sai Gon. Having only finished third three years prior, Sai Gon sold off their spot in the V.League 2 to an undisclosed team, rumored to be Second Division side Lam Dong FC, before subsequently dissolving – the end of the road for the men in pink.

The demise of Sai Gon – and also Than Quang Ninh during the pandemic – raised anxiety for Vietnamese football fans. Vietnamese corporations such as Hoang Anh Gia Lai, Topenland, T&T Group, Dong A Group, Becamex and Xuan Thien Group have invested heavily in the country’s football scene, so much so that they became the sole lifeline for clubs within the V.League. What would happen if something affected these companies, be it legal troubles or financial troubles, that forces them to pull out of football? Without any viable alternatives, these could spell the end for the clubs that these companies are bankrolling.