Coach Phan Thanh Hùng during his stint as national team head coach at the 2012 AFF Suzuki Cup.

Anh Đức

Vietnamese football lost one of its finest luminaries last Tuesday night. Phan Thanh Hùng, former head coach of the national team and one of the most successful domestic managers in V.League history, passed away at his home in Đà Nẵng after a long battle with illness. He was 66, having celebrated his birthday just twelve days earlier.

The timing carries a poignancy that is hard to put into words. On the morning of August 9, two days before his passing, the Vietnam Football Federation came to his home to present him with a commemorative medal 'For the Cause of Vietnamese Football', recognising more than three decades of devoted service. He received the honour surrounded by family, in the city where his story began and where it ended.

That story started on the pitch, in his role as a player for Quảng Nam-Đà Nẵng, before he moved into coaching through the youth ranks of his hometown club. But it was in Hà Nội that he built his monument.

Between 2010 and 2015 with Hà Nội T&T, the club now known as Hà Nội FC, Hùng delivered two V.League titles in 2010 and 2013, a Super Cup and four runner-up finishes. More enduring than the silverware, though, was the identity he forged: a possession-based, short-passing style that became the club's signature for more than a decade and shaped the generation of players, Nguyễn Quang Hải among them, who would later carry the national team to its golden era.

He tasted glory with the national team too, as the trusted right hand of Henrique Calisto during the historic AFF Cup triumph of 2008. In 2012 he was handed the top job itself, taking charge of both the senior side and the U23s. That spell ended in disappointment at the AFF Cup that year, and Hùng did something vanishingly rare in football: he took responsibility and resigned, without excuses, without blaming his players. Later in life, he spoke of feeling at ease with the notion of winning and losing, a serenity that most in this profession never find.

He then made Than Quảng Ninh a force, winning the National Cup and Super Cup in 2016, before serving Becamex Bình Dương and finally returning home to SHB Đà Nẵng, where he devoted his last working years to youth development and his role of technical director until this February. Even as illness took hold, his thoughts remained with the young players of his hometown.

Yet ask anyone in Vietnamese football what they will remember about Phan Thanh Hùng, and the trophies come second. In a profession full of pressure and friction, he was that rarest of figures: a man who passed through many dressing rooms and left only respect behind.

Calm on the touchline, sparing with controversy, quick to shield his players and slow to claim credit. When he left Hà Nội, his assistant Chu Đình Nghiêm initially refused to take the head coach's seat, out of deference to the man who had occupied it. This week, Nghiêm bade farewell to "a brother and a teacher worthy of respect". Former defender Nguyễn Quốc Long called him a warrior who fought to his final breath.

Vietnamese football is richer today because Phan Thanh Hùng coached in it, and poorer now that he is gone. The titles will stand in the record books. But his real legacy walks on the pitch every weekend, in every team that tries to pass its way to victory and in every coach who chooses dignity over drama. Rest well, thầy Hùng. VNS