An Irishman in search of a Vietnamese football experience has a night to remember.
The streets of Hanoi, Vietnam are brutal, rabid and eternally humming with traffic of every description. So the slightly more nightmarish scene than usual around Hang Day stadium wasn’t perturbing, even in my hungover, paranoid state. As I slowed down and saw the café I was looking for, people began gesturing at me frantically, beckoning me towards them. I wondered if they were trying to entice me into their houses for their own nefarious means, probably to hack me to pieces in front of the grandchildren.
A fine Saturday’s entertainment. No. Bike parking, of course.
I chose one of the less insistent women and joined Tom, PJ and Zack for some pre-match hydration. We were going to watch Ha Noi T&T take on Quang Ninh Coal in Vietnam’s top-flight football league. Though the beautiful game is beloved in the country, Manchester and Rooney resonate deeper than HAGL and Phuong ever will, and the country isn’t exactly a hotbed for sporting achievement. I was expecting the people who attended local football to be proper lunatics; with any luck they’d be like the mental patients who fill the terraces (and dugouts) of Irish League football. The sort of unhinged men who have no qualms screaming “Sheep-shagging cunts!” at 12 year olds. The sort of men who beg stewards to let them into a 600-strong away stand for a fight. My expectations were high.