Đặng Văn Lâm — footballer (goalkeeper) with roots in the Russia
Đặng Văn Lâm, known in Russia as Lev Shonovich Dang, was born in Moscow on 13 August 1993. His father, Đặng Văn Sơn, is a Vietnamese dancer and the twin brother of the People's Artist Đặng Văn Hùng; his mother is a Russian actress. She admired the Soviet goalkeeper Lev Yashin, and named her son Lev after him.
He grew up in Moscow. Noticed by a Spartak Moscow coach after a youth match, he joined the club's academy, and later moved to Dynamo Moscow's, but could not break through, and played in the lower divisions of Russian football. In May 2015, hoping to be considered for Vietnam at that year's Southeast Asian Games, he posted an appeal on social media, and later that year he moved to his father's country. He has said that although he was born in Russia, his father was Vietnamese, and he held a Vietnamese passport and could read and write the language.
He began his Vietnamese career with Hoàng Anh Gia Lai and then joined Hải Phòng, where in 2018 he was regarded as the best goalkeeper of the V.League season, conceding twenty-six goals in twenty-six games. He was first called up to the national team as third-choice goalkeeper for a tournament in Myanmar in June 2016, as Vietnam looked for players of Vietnamese descent abroad. Under the coach Park Hang-seo he became first choice for the 2018 AFF Championship, which Vietnam won in Hanoi on 15 December 2018 with a record run of clean sheets from him; the next year he helped the team reach the quarter-finals of the AFC Asian Cup.
In 2019 he moved to Muangthong United in Thailand for a reported fee of $500,000. In 2021, after a dispute with the club over pay during the pandemic, he joined Cerezo Osaka, becoming the first Vietnamese player in Japan's J1 League. He later returned to the V.League, playing for Bình Định and then Ninh Bình.
He has remained a link between the two football cultures: he hired a fitness coach from Spartak at his own expense, and in Vietnam his mother publicly thanked his club and supporters after the 2018 final.
"Born and raised in Moscow, where he trained at the Spartak and Dynamo academies and played in the Russian lower divisions; moved to Vietnam in 2015."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Moscow (Russia); Russian mother
Born Lev Shonovich Dang in Moscow in 1993 to a Vietnamese father, the dancer Đặng Văn Sơn, and a Russian mother, an actress who named him after the goalkeeper Lev Yashin. He trained at Spartak and Dynamo Moscow before moving to his father's country in 2015.
Father Đặng Văn Sơn, a Vietnamese dancer (twin brother of the People's Artist Đặng Văn Hùng); mother a Russian actress.
Moscow (Russia); Russian mother. Today, the former Soviet space comprises fifteen sovereign independent states.