Hanoi International Football League

The D1 title was another close race in the end but one team were, right up until their final game, raking in the points in their fight for the title.

Every season we see different teams bringing different things to this competition, songs, craic, and a love of the game, but every now and then you get a team that shows up in ways that really pay off over the course of a season.

In that respect, Hanoi Xide led the way this year, and their players earned it across every minute on the pitch.

And lastly to the most coveted of HIFL awards. If there's two things that really make this league tick, it's great clubs and sexy kits.

The fact of the matter is if you're gonna spend 90 minutes running around chasing your marker in the Hanoian hit, you might as well have a nice view while doing it and the Barefoot Rangers were happy to oblige with a very sexy kit indeed.

But it's not just the views we play football for, we also play it for the craic, for a way to take the edge off on a Saturday after a long week at work and this year it's Harps who provided. Who would have thought that a team that was "relegated" last year would step up their game and finish third, earning a VIFL spot.

Of course, part of being club of the year is also bringing the vibes every Saturday and they've never had a shortage of that no matter their finishing position although maybe we'd request they tone down the vibes just a little bit for next year's awards lest we get banned from every establishment in Tay Ho.

It's unsurprising to see this year's D1 and D2 player of the year are from two of the stronger sides in their respective divisions. Nguyen Van Khoi was this season's D2 top scorer, finished second only to Hanoi Xide's Hoat last season, and has featured in the best 11 two years in a row now while Brendan has won himself so many player of the year trophies now that he's probably using them to prop up his coffee table. We'll be looking forward to seeing these two face each other next season with INB making their grand return to the first division.

One of the big reasons behind introducing a second division by whatever genius puppetmaster is working behind the scenes of this organisation was to increase the competitiveness in the first division by giving teams across the entire table something to fight for or against. This has proven to be very successful with dramatic relegation battles across two seasons now, relegation battles we hope won't lose their edge as teams continue to subvert them by doing things like refusing promotion, moving onto greener pastures, or just not being the best at making friends.

Not withstanding any of these eventualities, this year's relegation claimed two long-standing HIFL sides. Drink Team, become the first of the big three to ever be relegated, meaning their caps count in the all-time league table (which can be found on the HIFL website) stops at at 395 games, leaving just Minsk and Capitals to continue on past 400 next season. Red Star's end was more dramatic with a final gameweek showdown against Inter who managed to save themselves with a 2-0 win marking their first and only time leaving the relegation zone since gameweek 2 back in September.

As for the teams coming up, INB after over 10 years of HIFL football and two seasons in D2 have earned themselves promotion after their best season to date to see if they can put up the results against old rivals in D1 next season while Hornets have earned back-to-back promotions from D2 proving their doubts for this season as unwarranted and ensuring their entry to D1 next year. Which of those pair actually gets to collect the D2 trophy? Well that actually still remains to be decided after a controversial deciding match between Hornets and Binh Minh ended with 10 minutes still on the clock but regardless of who comes out the victor, INB and Hornets promotion is secured.

This represents a first for the HIFL, a best 11 with a back four. Is that a testament to the defending this year? We were actually hoping to set ourselves up for a moment of facetiousness with that question but a bit of investigation suggests that it actually might be true with this season being the second-least goals scored per game since the first ever HIFL awards back in 2019. (We'll stick the actual figures below for stats-curious parties.) Needless to say, here is the best 11 players division 1 can field according to our voting captains and gaffers. Wonder how much of a game they'd give a V league side...

D1 GOALS PER GAME
25/26 - 4.2
24/25 - 4.0
23/24 - 5.4
22/23 - 5.0
21/22 - 4.8
20/21 - 5.1
19/20 - 5.2
18/19 - 5.1
17/18 - 3.9

You can find the full record and more under the 'History & Records' section of the HIFL website.

This is our second season having a second division and the competitiveness and quality is really starting to improve giving a lot of players a chance to flourish before their promotion into D1. Here's the best of the best in D2 this year, half of which will challenging it up with the big dogs in D1 next season!

This season we've had four unique winners from our four competitions (one withstanding) and you don't win competitions if you don't win games and you don't win games without the players who score you the goals, the players that set them up, and the keepers that keep the opposition from doing the same to you and here's the cream of the crop in those categories across all our competitions.

We obviously want to congratulate all winners but want to draw particular attention to some of the more outlandish results here such as Red Star's Anh Ninh managing 6 clean sheets to win the D1 golden glove despite relegation, a testament to how tight and competitive this league is. Then there's Jo Ashenden, a striker who was lined up to receive the cup golden glove up until Nguyen Dinh Bao kept Hanoi Xide at bay in their cup final win on Saturday, and Ahmed Chibani, who not only won the cup golden boot but had over double the goals of second place despite only making it to the quarter-finals.

But of course, also congratulations to Eamonn Kennedy, Tai Nguyen, Nguyen Ngoc Kien, Vu Ngoc Minh, Hai Tien Vu, and Jamie Stuart on pumping the stats all season.

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