Cong An Nhan Dan signs Gonzalo Fornari: from Busan looking toward the First Division promotion race

I remember a July afternoon in Busan. Busan IPark's training ground sits close to the sea, and salt-laden wind swept across an empty stand. Gonzalo Fornari stood at the edge of the penalty area, 2m01 tall, shoulders as wide as a milestone, but he did not jump. He simply stood there, waiting for the ball, and when it arrived, he shielded it with his body and turned with a short, economical movement. K-League 2 defenders usually chose to push him wide, but his legs were long, his first step was long, and that was enough to create a small pocket of space - enough to shoot, to pass, to hold the ball for two more seconds while teammates advanced.

I sat in the second row, notebook open on my lap. That night I wrote in my journal: if he ever goes to Vietnam, watch how he uses his feet, not how he uses his head. The stadium had no spectators, but I could still hear the pulse of the match. Three months later, that pulse reached a place more than three thousand kilometres from Busan.

Cong An Nhan Dan has just signed Gonzalo Fornari to reinforce their First Division 2026-2027 campaign. He is the tallest foreign player currently competing in both the First Division and V-League, at 2m01. Last season, the 26-year-old striker wore Busan IPark's shirt in K-League 2 and scored 7 goals.

Those are the facts. The real story lies elsewhere, and it begins with something few people notice: a club announcing its ambition by choosing whom to keep silent.

Context: a title ambition declared without a press conference

Cong An Nhan Dan - formerly PVF-CAND - entered the First Division 2026-2027 with a goal that was not spoken aloud but was expressed through money and contracts. That goal is to win the title and gain promotion. The way they built their squad reveals this more clearly than any press conference.

At the start of the season, they signed Santos Thaileon, a Brazilian who was the First Division's top scorer the previous season with 14 goals for Quy Nhon United. A signing like that is not for survival. It is for climbing. A club wanting to rise goes and finds the man who scored the most goals in the very league it plays in, and brings him in. That is a reasonable choice, the least risky choice, the choice any technical director would make with a budget.

Then something odd happened. In Round 1, on September 11, when Cong An Nhan Dan hosted Long An at home, coach Nguyen Duc Thang did not register Santos Thaileon. No foreign player was in the squad. A club belonging to a force with ambition entered its opening match of the season without a single foreign striker on the pitch.

They won 2-1, but it was a laboured win. The scorer of both goals was Nguyen Hoang Anh, a striker who came on as a substitute. That brace saved three points, but it also raised a question no one answered immediately. If Santos Thaileon was fit, why was he not registered? If he was not fit, why did the club keep him on the list? If he had not adapted, why would a club targeting the title leave its number one striker out of the opening match?

There is a gap in information here, and that gap is worth examining closely. I have followed top-flight training sessions in Busan long enough to know that non-registration decisions do not always stem from injury. Sometimes they stem from a player not yet understanding how his teammates play, not yet grasping the team's rhythm, not yet understanding how different a pass in one league is from a pass in another. Sometimes they stem from the coaching staff wanting to keep a slot open to try someone else.

And then, to prepare for the title race, Cong An Nhan Dan signed another Brazilian striker: Gonzalo Fornari. He will be ready to reinforce both the National Cup and the upcoming First Division campaign.

What stands out: the 2m01 height and the trap of the number

One detail makes this signing draw more attention than usual. Gonzalo Fornari stands 2m01 tall, the tallest among all foreign players currently competing in both the First Division and V-League. In Vietnamese football, the height of foreign players has long become a marker mentioned far more often than it deserves. People remember a striker who stood 2m06, remember the goals he scored, and remember the matches in which he was silent.

Before Fornari, Nam Dinh once had a striker who stood 2m06: Kyle Hudlin, an Englishman, in the 2026-2026 season. Hudlin left his mark in specific matches: a brace in the 2026 Super Cup loss to Cong An Ha Noi, a brace against the Vietnam national team in a 4-0 friendly win, and a goal in a 1-3 away defeat to Gamba Osaka in the 2026-2026 AFC Champions League. In those matches, he scored. But in the 2026-2026 V-League, Kyle Hudlin scored no goals in 5 matches and soon said goodbye due to injury.

This is where I want to pause longer, because it is the core of the story about Fornari. A tall striker can shine in a cup match or a friendly, then vanish in a long league campaign, and the difference between those two contexts is not height. It is rhythm. A cup match is a compressed event, one in which anything can happen within 90 minutes, where a well-timed header can decide everything. A long league is a sequence of repeated rhythms, where defenders learn how to handle you after two rounds, where fitness is worn down, where referees know who you are, where pitch conditions, weather, and a packed schedule change every calculation.

Kyle Hudlin scored against the Vietnam national team in a friendly. He scored in the AFC Champions League. Then he scored no goals in five V-League matches. Same player, same height, same aerial ability. The difference is not the man, but how a striker is nourished within a system. Nam Dinh at that time had many attacking outlets, many men wanting the ball, many egos. A 2m06 striker needs crosses, early deliveries, and teammates who understand he is not a man running into space but a man standing in the right place. When those conditions are not met systematically, height becomes an expensive ornament that cannot be used.

With Fornari, the question is not how tall he is. The question is how Cong An Nhan Dan will nourish him.

What Busan IPark taught me about Fornari

Last season, I had the chance to follow Gonzalo Fornari in Busan IPark's colours in K-League 2. This is a league I know fairly well because I live in Busan and often visit the club's training ground. K-League 2 is a punishing league in its own way: little glory, many long trips, uneven pitches, and a very fast transition pace. A striker scoring 7 goals here is not useless. But 7 goals is also not a number that stuns people.

What I remember about Fornari is not the goal count. It is how he moved without the ball. He rarely charged into the box like an arrow. He chose positions, stood at the edge, waited, and when the ball reached his feet, he did something very specific: shielded it with his body, turned, and looked for a short pass. He is not the type of striker who lives on continuous aerial duels. He is the type who lives on the space he occupies, and on holding that space long enough for teammates to exploit.

For a K-League 2 side, that kind of striker has certain value but is not always fully exploited. K-League 2 plays fast, transitions constantly, and many teams choose to send the ball wide and cross early. A striker who does not jump much will be abandoned in that style, unless the team actively builds its play around him. Busan IPark at the time did not build its play around Fornari. They used him as an option within the system, not as the centre of the system. Seven goals is the result of a man doing a good job in a role not entirely made for him.

That makes me wonder: at Cong An Nhan Dan, will Fornari be the centre, or merely an option?

The title race and the deadline problem

There is an important technical factor any First Division follower must remember: the foreign player registration deadline. The National Cup has a deadline for replacing and adding players at 3:00 PM on September 17. The First Division has a deadline of 3:00 PM on October 15.

From now until then, there is plenty of time for coach Nguyen Duc Thang to weigh his options, to choose which foreign player to register for the main arena - the First Division, which decides the promotion ticket. This is by no means a simple decision, because it involves both Santos Thaileon and Gonzalo Fornari, and may involve other names yet to appear.

Cong An Nhan Dan will host Hue at home in the National Cup qualifier on October 6. On October 11, the team will play away at Khanh Hoa in Round 2 of the First Division. Those two matches, five days apart, are two entirely different contexts. The National Cup match is one you can experiment in, risk in, register a new foreign player to see how he reacts. The First Division match is one you must win, or at least not lose, because every point in a long league can be the point that decides everything at season's end.

That is why Fornari's arrival is not just a signing. It is a test of how Cong An Nhan Dan manages its resources in a season where it has set the highest goal.

What does not show on the scoreboard

I have watched enough training sessions to know that a team does not operate on numbers. It operates on smaller things: how a striker stands waiting for the ball, how a defender turns his head to look at a teammate before passing, how a coach stops a session to speak privately with a player for thirty seconds. There are things that do not show on the scoreboard, but they decide everything.

For Cong An Nhan Dan, what does not show on the scoreboard may be instability in the dressing room. A club with several foreign players competing for one registration slot is a club prone to tension. Santos Thaileon arrived with a top scorer title. Gonzalo Fornari arrived with a 2m01 height and a season in K-League 2. Both want to start. Both know that in the First Division, foreign slots are limited. When two men both understand that only one can be registered, the dynamics in the dressing room change in ways no stat measures.

I once witnessed something similar in Busan a few years ago. It was the season when I wrote more in my personal journal and less in my articles. Looking back, I understand that was not a time of silence, but a time of learning how to keep rhythm. The 2026 season taught me that silence is also a form of cheering.

The contrarian angle: height is not the answer

There is a way to tell this story that many would choose: Gonzalo Fornari stands 2m01, he will be a formidable aerial threat, Cong An Nhan Dan will gain another weapon to break down the deep, compact defences of the First Division. That telling sounds very reasonable, and it is also very easy to lead to disappointment.

The contrarian angle is this: in the Vietnamese First Division, a 2m01 striker faces a problem he encountered less often in K-League 2. Defences in Vietnam often play deep, compact, crowded. When you are 2m01 standing among four or five defenders who have dropped deep, you are surrounded by bodies, and the height advantage diminishes greatly. Tall strikers who succeed in Vietnam are usually not the best in the air, but those who know how to use their body to create space for themselves or teammates, who know how to run to pull defenders out of position, who know how to receive the ball at the right rhythm. Height is only a small part of the equation.

Kyle Hudlin is living proof of this. He stood 2m06, scored in a friendly where Vietnam lost 0-4, scored in the AFC Champions League, then scored no goals in five V-League matches. If height were the answer, Hudlin would have dominated. He did not. He scored nothing. And that is the lesson any club seeking a tall striker to solve its attacking problem should remember.

With Fornari, what is notable is not that he is 2m01. What is notable is that he played a season in K-League 2, scoring 7 goals, and did so with a style not entirely dependent on aerial play. Brazilians grow up in a football culture that values individual technique, and a Brazilian striker standing 2m01 is usually the result of combining physique and skill rather than physique alone. If Cong An Nhan Dan know how to use Fornari as a striker who can receive the ball at his feet, turn, and create attacking rhythm, he can be useful in a way no height statistic reflects.

But if they use him as a post to launch crosses into the box, the story may go another way, and it is not new at all.

A Korean crying over Vietnamese football

I live in Busan, working for a market that is not my homeland, and following Vietnamese football from a geographical distance. There is a moment in my career I always return to when thinking about players who come to Vietnam to play: the image of a Korean crying over Vietnamese football. I have written about it many times. A Korean crying over Vietnamese football. That is a shared rhythm.

Football does not distinguish nationalities when it touches human emotion. A Brazilian player leaving Busan for a province in Vietnam, an Englishman who once played in Nam Dinh, a Korean coach who once led the Vietnam national team - all are beats in the same harmony. Fornari's story at Cong An Nhan Dan is one small beat in that harmony. It does not matter because it is big news. It matters because it shows how a club in Vietnam is learning to buy and sell players, how a league is reaching upward, how a football nation is trying to lift its rhythm.

What comes next

From now until October 15, coach Nguyen Duc Thang will have decisions to make. The National Cup on October 6 is a chance to test. The First Division on October 11 is a check of readiness. And after that, when the registration deadline closes, we will know who has been chosen for the main arena.

The question I want to leave is not whether Fornari is tall. The question is whether Cong An Nhan Dan will build a rhythm of play around him, or continue buying names and hoping one of them finds his own rhythm in a system not yet defined. Every player has his own rhythm. I just look for where it begins. And at Cong An Nhan Dan, that rhythm is still waiting to be written, in those spectator-less training sessions that I, from Busan, keep trying to hear.