When the analysis is empty – a warning for football journalism

I have just received a sports analysis document. It is long, with complete sections: tactics, finance, transfers, risks, dressing room. But inside, every information box is empty. No player names. No team names. No match was identified. The only words remaining are warnings: 'insufficient information', 'cannot assess', 'no data'. A sports article like a dry skeleton, complete in bones but without heart, lungs, or breath. In 51 years of watching football, I have never seen anything quite like this. A bad article usually distorts facts or arranges them chaotically. But an article that contains no facts at all is different. It is like a newspaper printed with thousands of words of emptiness and sold on the street. Some people tell me not to care. An empty document should be discarded. But I disagree. In a world overflowing with information, emptiness can be more dangerous than error. A wrong number leaves a trace for readers to check. But an empty analytical framework leaves no trace. It merely creates the illusion that someone has done serious work. When a young reporter receives that framework and sees all columns blank, the pressure to fill it will drive them to fabricate stories. That is where rumors and fake news begin. When I was a young journalist across the border, I was taught one principle: if you cannot verify a detail, leave that space blank. That lesson stayed with me through eight World Cups and hundreds of matches in Vietnam. Leaving a space blank is not a failure; it is an admission of limits. Admitting limits is better than pretending to know everything. But today, 'leaving blank' has become the opposite disease: people build perfect frameworks, then no one checks the inner content. The framework is beautiful, the content is hollow, and the reader is left lost in a maze of terms leading nowhere. People often talk about uncut gems in football. I have spent my life searching for them. There was a young boy I once watched at Hoa Xuan stadium, not a star, but with a touch of the ball that I have never forgotten. He did not need someone to tell him how to run; he needed someone who could read the hunger of aspiration in his eyes. I wrote about him not because he needed an article, but because he needed someone to believe that an uncut gem does not need polishing, only a patient enough gaze to love. But I could write that only after seeing him with my own eyes, after replaying the footage many times, after checking his name, shirt number, position on the field. No matter how rough a gem is, it must first exist before it can be loved. An analysis without a player name is like a jewelry store displaying an empty box. There is a counter-intuitive view I want to share: sometimes emptiness is the most transparent thing in the world. Because it does not pretend. It says plainly that the writer lacks enough data to conclude. What is scary is not the empty boxes, but how people react to them. Some newsrooms will discard the document, and that is correct. Others will ask a reporter to 'rework it until it has content', and that is how journalism turns into a guessing game. I have seen many two-thousand-word articles full of tactical diagrams that say nothing at all. Conversely, a short article naming three specific situations, with verifiable numbers, is a hundred times more valuable than a flashy framework. Football journalism today faces a paradox. Technology gives us access to more data than ever: expected goals, pass counts, distances covered, pressing metrics. But the same technology produces automated reports that spit out page after page no one reads. When everything can be produced easily, the value of accuracy becomes more expensive. Writers no longer only need to write well; they need to know how to say 'no' to an empty analysis framework. I was once mocked for being poetic on television, and I am proud of it. Because I believe football is poetry. But a poem must begin with a real touch of the ball, from a stoppage-time moment when the goalkeeper rushes up to head the ball, from the anxious look of a defender after being beaten. Literature cannot replace reality. It only illuminates reality from another angle. If reality is not there, every word is just dust blowing in the wind. At 67, I still believe in magic. I believe there are moments that cannot be explained by numbers. But I also believe that true magic appears only after people have done all the boring work: checking player rosters, cross-checking statements, rewatching footage, noting every minute. The magic of a match lies not in the word 'brilliant' but in the small details that are overlooked. Without details, there is nothing to overlook, and nothing to redeem. I write these words not to condemn a specific document. That document is merely a symptom of a larger illness in sports media: chasing article counts, chasing tools, chasing speed while forgetting that before publication, a real ball must have rolled on a real pitch. We have a duty to tell the story of the ball with respect for the truth. If there is no truth, we should stand still. The stands may be empty, but history still needs witnesses to tell its most beautiful sorrow. And history cannot begin from an empty box. What I want to say to young journalists in Vietnam today is simple: do not be afraid to admit you do not have enough information. Do not fear that your article will be shorter than planned. Do not fear an editor frowning when you return an empty analysis and say, 'I cannot write anything from this framework.' A well-timed silence is worth more than a thousand wrong words. I lived through the era of typewriters, and now through the era of algorithms. But the line between journalism and fabrication never changes. Today, an empty analysis document came to my hands. I do not regard it as a waste of time. I regard it as a reminder of where this profession should stop. When the ball does not appear on the page, the writer should stop. Stopping is not failure. Stopping is a way to let the ball keep rolling, to let the story ripen, to let the uncut gem be found in the mud. And when enough facts are gathered, I believe we will write articles worthy of every drop of sweat on the pitch. Above all, I want readers to understand that a good sports article does not need to be long, does not need to be crammed with words, but it must be honest about what actually happened. That honesty is becoming rare in an age of mass-produced content. If we do not preserve it, even stadiums full of fans will only become another empty backdrop. And the ball will not be able to sigh, because it has never been rolled onto the pitch.