Vietnam football league has region's highest ratio of foreign strikers

ASEAN Football, a Facebook page for Southeast Asian football, recently collected this data, and found that at Vietnamese clubs 57.14 percent of strikers were imported.

South Korea was next, followed by China, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, the Philippines, and Japan in descending order.

The ratio of foreign strikers in various leagues in East and Southeast Asia. Graphics by ASEAN Football.

National team coach Park Hang Seo has voiced his concern to V. League 1 clubs about their leaving Vietnamese strikers on the bench, warning the national team could not get new talent if players do not have much time on the field.

He in fact has to watch clubs in the lower level leagues play to find promising strikers.

Last season the league had 47 foreign players, 70 percent of whom were forwards.

One local football coach said "there will be no need to hire foreign players if there are any good Vietnamese strikers."

Only three of the 15 top scorers in V. League 1 last year were Vietnamese, all finishing in joint sixth place with six goals each, according to Vietnam Professional Football.

Brazil dominated the list with five players, followed by Jamaica with three.