Khôi Nguyên sits alone in the away supporters' section at Gelora Bandung Lautan Api Stadium in Bandung, Indonesia. His team, Thể Công-Viettel, lost the AFC Champions League Two match on Thursday. — Photo courtesy of Seasia Goal

Anh Đức

One of the most talked-about moments during Thể Công-Viettel FC’s match against Indonesia’s Persib Bandung in the AFC Champions League Two was not the 1-0 away defeat or the two red cards shown during the match, but the sight of a lone Thể Công-Viettel supporter in the stands in Bandung, having travelled all the way from Việt Nam.

In the raucous atmosphere typical of Indonesian club football, one fan was pictured alone in the stands, holding a red flag with the Thể Công-Viettel emblem and cheering on his team. The image went viral on social media, and the fan earned admiration from Indonesian supporters.

His name is Khôi Nguyên. He is 19, a student from Hồ Chí Minh City, and he has followed the Army club since 2020, when Viettel lifted the V.League title at Thống Nhất Stadium in a season disrupted by the pandemic. Since then, he has taken between eight and ten flights a year to watch the team, combining trips home with matches at Hàng Đẫy and following the team to Đà Nẵng, Quảng Nam and Pleiku.

Bandung, though, was a first. It was his longest journey yet, and his first taste of a stadium where some 15,000 Bobotoh, as Persib’s supporters are known, roared for 90 minutes.

He admitted to feeling nervous, joking that it was lucky the stadium had no roof, or the noise would have been even more terrifying. Indonesian friends helped him find his feet. By the following day, nearly 2,000 messages had flooded his phone, mostly from Indonesian accounts, and he simply switched it off and went to sleep. Persib fans online crowned him the man of the match.

Asked why he does it, his answer was disarmingly simple: he loves the atmosphere at the stadium, and he believes in the team he supports.

That last part should make Thể Công Viettel’s leadership pause for thought. Belief is a gift, and at the moment the club is struggling to repay it.

The team travelled to Indonesia on the back of a winless run that included a 3-1 home defeat to Hồng Lĩnh Hà Tĩnh, with questions mounting over coach Velizar Popov’s future. In Bandung, they lost again, finishing with ten men.

In recent months, this column has written about Nam Định’s disbanded supporters’ club and Hà Nội FC fans selling their season tickets on Facebook. Those are the consequences of clubs taking loyalty for granted. Thể Công Viettel still have something precious: fans willing to cross borders alone at their own expense. That kind of devotion cannot be bought, but it can certainly be squandered.

Proving their worth starts on the pitch, with performances that match the effort of the people in the stands. But it should not end there. Vietnamese clubs rarely invest in away support, whether through organised travel, discounted tickets or simply acknowledging the supporters who make the journey.

Nguyên’s story is a reminder of how much goodwill is waiting to be nurtured, and how little it would take to grow it.

He has already booked his tickets for the trip to face FC Seoul, purchasing them the moment the draw was made. The least his club can do is make sure he is not the only one there next time, and give him something worth cheering for when he arrives.

A true fan stays no matter the odds. The club’s job is to make sure he never has to wonder why. VNS