After completing the 2nd round of the 2022 World Cup qualifiers in the UAE, the Vietnam national football team left fans with a myriad of emotions, achieving a historic feat: qualifying for the final round of the World Cup for the first time.
Currently, the players have returned to the country and are undergoing quarantine at a hotel. On the first day of quarantine, goalkeeper/streamer Bùi Tấn Trường had a live chat session with fans. During this livestream, he shared a lot about his life, his career, and the time he considered transitioning to being a full-time… streamer.
“There was a time I stayed home for 7 months (after finishing my contract with Becamex Binh Duong), I started streaming, planning to be a streamer, even invested in a full setup. But you know what, every time I went live and got just 100 viewers, I was extremely happy. There were times when I streamed for 3 or 4 hours and only had a dozen viewers; I really appreciated those who followed me back then […]. There was a time the views went up to over a hundred, then two hundred, then four hundred, and I thought to myself, ‘Is today my lucky day with so many views?’ It felt so incredibly good, everyone.
Then later, when I moved to Hanoi, interactions started to increase, but at that time I streamed less. But who would have thought now, I can get up to 12,600 viewers in one session […].”
The period Tấn Trường mentioned was the second half of 2019 when he finished his contract with Becamex Binh Duong but couldn’t find a new team, leading to… unemployment. During this time, Tấn Trường chose to play League of Legends and livestream to distract himself. However, this job wasn’t easy, as Tấn Trường wasn’t a professionally developed streamer, and his streams were mainly broadcast on his personal Facebook, resulting in modest viewership.
Nevertheless, he still found joy in his passion for gaming and livestreaming by “trying hard” to climb ranks and interact with friends and fans. The time Tấn Trường joined Hanoi FC in April 2020 was also when he realized that he wasn’t destined to be a streamer, as the football career had not abandoned this 35-year-old goalkeeper.
At this moment, with impressive performances after returning to the national team, he not only receives support from domestic football fans but also makes League of Legends fans in Vietnam feel proud to have a “hero” on the field.