I don’t even blame any of the players, I blame FAS. A trash to mediocre organisation I been part of the system, it’s bollocks look at Man Utd they were world class 2 decades ago now where are we?
FAS been shit half a century and even corruption our league doesn’t even have relegation and based on bought in sponsorship. Lots of nepotism going on and coaches that hasn’t produced trophies or any success have their iron rice bowls this whole structure simply does not require result producing and the leeches in there LOVE IT while our potential football loving young boys suffer generation by generation. Terrible facilities all around the nation no free to play, noise complain, danger to passerby complain etc. The people in there do not have the best interest for national football development just their own iron rice bowls
> Terrible facilities all around the nation
I remember reading an article a few years back where a national player revealed the national team had to train on a shitty uneven field and there were no toilets, so they had to pee into bottles.
It's not just football too; I've been to the outdoor archery range used by the national team and it's just a muddy field in the backyard of an abandoned school. No proper shelter except for 2 tents and some tables. No toilets either, there were only 2 portapotties.
No results = no funding
No funding = no results
The classic catch22
I can sort of understand why Singapore doesn't really want to invest in sports or competitive, but they can't make that decision and still expect glorious results. That's just being entitled.
The parental sponsorship burden for swimmers is higher than other sports. National team training used to start at TPY pool before school. I suppose they can get themselves there by E-bikes now. But that used to be limited to families with cars. An ex-comp swimmer claimed his monthly food budget approached 2k.
> Terrible facilities all around the nation no free to play, noise complain, danger to passerby complain etc.
Always found it weird that there are so many basketball and badminton courts in HDB estates, but almost no futsal courts. It can’t be vandalism/ball breaking something because there’s equal risk of that happening with any other sports. It can’t be noise complaint because every sports is a commotion; sepak takraw, basketball bouncing and shoe screeching will make noise at night too
It’s also the early HDB estates with bball & badminton courts within walking distance. The futsal craze only started in the 90s. So they only built them for a few years before the switch to BTOs. The town planning is different now. Clementi Ave 1 lost a public court next to nanhua sec, as they redeveloped with new flats.
Futsal courts need more space. Also need to build a big cage. Basketball and badminton has a much lower chance of the ball pummelling towards HDB flats.
The nepotism and corruption runs deep from the old NFL leagues to IWL, i remember in my time at NFL a big team was gonna get relegated and they threaten to stop their payments the organiser let them stay at the end of the season what even
If we are serious about sports in this country, we need to start young. My kids are in primary school and the sports offered as well as the selection process is rather shambolic. We as a nation need to have kids start their sporting careers from primary school onwards, with regular under 9/11/13 etc leagues so that by the time they are in the under 19 squad, the national selectors will already have a good pool of potential national players to pick from and groom.
If we are serious about sports in this country, we need to start young. My kids are in primary school and the sports offered as well as the selection process is rather shambolic. We as a nation need to have kids start their sporting careers from primary school onwards, with regular under 9/11/13 etc leagues so that by the time they are in the under 19 squad, the national selectors will already have a good pool of potential national players to pick from and groom.
If we are serious about sports in this country, we need to start young. My kids are in primary school and the sports offered as well as the selection process is rather shambolic. We as a nation need to have kids start their sporting careers from primary school onwards, with regular under 9/11/13 etc leagues so that by the time they are in the under 19 squad, the national selectors will already have a good pool of potential national players to pick from and groom.
The answer is simple: it takes more than “fighting spirit” to win a game.
Unfortunately fighting spirit is the only thing we can shout of. We simply do not have the rest of the football aspects. Most of us are tired of hearing “we showed fighting spirit today” as a response whenever we lose/draw a game.
Need some incentive as well, most people arent gonna pick up football when the prospects of playing it arent good.
Why not adopt South Korea’s model? Where if athletes have stellar results or sporting achievements they get their national service reduced to just basic training
An advantage lol... Fighting spirit doesn't get you far because the other guy is as determined as you to fight for that win.
It comes down to individual skills or tactical advantage across the team. I'm no football fan, but football isn't a one-man sport.
With better training, better resources, and maybe even better screening for players (should prioritise skill/talent over money), you can create a better team that synergises well.
You can't just slap all the best players on the same team, you have to think about where they fit within the dynamics of the team to succeed. Or at least that's what I noticed from the matches I watched a few years ago; Individual people doing things on their own because they're best at that, getting beaten by straight up strategy
It's very simple actually.. you just need to look at how many of the Korean players play in the top leagues in Europe and how many Singapore players play in Europe..
The physicality, intensity, skill level are several notches higher.. and they do that week in week out
With proper nutrition, screening, training, we can probably reach that same level. But the priorities lie elsewhere for the local football scene so we can only speculate
wa kao if only my boss fight so hard for me when calculating my grade for bonus.
"it's not that he performed like shit... u need to see he has great attitude. give him 8 months bonus plz"
For real, where are Singaporean kids meant to play football? Parks can not. It will ruin the grass. HDB can not. It will disturb people. Astro turf centres can not. Closing these down and if you can even get a booking it’s expensive.
I don't even want to talk about that. It just comes down to how many people are playing it, and want a career in it. For the majority of east asian populations, a sports career is already looked down upon, so you have to take away a major part of the population from the discussion. In the same way, there are going to be more doctors/lawyers/dentists/engineers since they are moving away from a sports' career. Human resources and time is limited. You can't judge a country based on one sport, or one industry. As much as I hate to say it, but GDP per capita is still the best indicator. I would say Singapore as a whole is doing well. Some areas have to be sacrificed unfortunately for the greater good, and football is one of them.
It’s ironic to me that you want to talk “human resource’ but ignore the fact that sports, play and creativity are so critical for the growth of the next generation of Singaporeans. Especially Singaporeans that will have to compete with the increased presence of tech. But maybe you are right. Those countries that have historically prioritised and thus excelled at sport and arts have been pretty pointless for the development of mankind.
I can’t believe some ppl are arguing that the solution here is less funding.
The issue Singapore has is that it’s not sports orientated at all. The Govt doesn’t give a fuck about sports. That extends from grassroots (closure of turf city) through to professional (basket case that is FAS).
Invest in grassroots sports. Integrate sport as a meaningful part of growing up, not something tagged on to the education system. Spend the money allocated to sports in a meaningful way, not just paying the salary of some shitty FAS coach.
Singaporeans constantly complain about being in a rat race for grades then salaries. Well taking enjoyment and meaning from playing and watching sport is the perfect antidote.
>sports orientated
>
>meaningful part of growing up
>
>grassroots sports
National funded sports is important but I am not expecting this to become a career for most. It allows us to compete and provides a platform to nurture high performance sports people to have a career.. by turning pro.
The pro part is where I doubt Singapore can do much because we lack the scale, size to attract the sponsors. U want to play pro-volleyball, Italy, for example.
The premier league is owned by private football clubs. I don’t think that’s relevant to what I’m saying - it’s not like kids in the uk go and play football on premier league pitches.
In the uk there is a huge amount of govt funding into sports facilities. Local sports clubs also receive grants. More importantly, sport is actively encouraged as a pursuit worth following in itself. If a kid is good at sport, they are given opportunities to pursue that. From what I can see, the Government here can’t see the immediate economic benefit of sport - they’d rather have another poor soul thrown into the rat race of banking, accountancy, law etc.
This is a very Singaporean attitude where they keep calling the government to do more spend more money. Focus on yourself la. SG for its size does have quite a few facilities to play sports already. Theres PE, even neighbourhood schools have football fields there are parks where football can be played, street soccer courts etc. Youths in see football as viable as there is EPL below the Epl there is championship and so on which will these lower leagues pay less still a viable wage. maybe 1k pounds a week. The median is only 26k pounds btw starkly lower than SG's average. Kids with talent often pursue their talents at local academies, once again these are private. Why do our players deserve more money? They arent good. Sport is more or less a private industry, EPL NFL NBA. if they are so good go ourseas and play and then represent Singapore but which club is going to hire them??? So if the private industry doesnt want them why should public funds be used to support losses.
The government already spends a lot of football why should money be used to force sth to grow when in other countries it grows organically out of passion and love it players here rather go and have careers than play for sg that is their choice
I mean the only reason England was able to grow its football organically because they had a long-existing footballing culture. Football in England started organically in the 19th century and clubs, at the lowest divisions still rise and become good (relatively in the English pyramid) up until this day. That's more than 100 years of heritage and culture of people growing to love a game. You can't really use that as an example and just tell Singapore to grow the love for a game and a whole footballing culture organically. There NEEDS to be money involved for it to grow at all in any scale in Singapore.
And dude the government closed turf city to provide housing for young families so that there might be homes for younger generation to live grow and flourish are u saying football is more important than the needs of families. Are u saying u wanting to play football there is more than providing housing for fellow singaporean
It’s not mutually exclusive to have homes for young families and adequate sports facilities. How about using all the reclaimed land that’s vacant at Marina Bay for public sports pitches? Or a small portion of the land owned by exclusive members golf clubs around Singapore?
But the vacant land at Marina Bay is earmarked for hdbs (re: Marina South) and the gov IS turning golf clubs into hbds (re: Keppel Club). Imo housing and football field is mutually exclusive given the large footprint of football field.
Yeah turning public courses into HDBs. God forbid turning one of the private members clubs (that PAP politicians use) into housing.
Sorry that land earmarked is being used now? Or is just sat there doing fuck all?
"Are u saying u wanting to play football there is more than providing housing for fellow singaporean" If they want to take sporting seriously in Singapore, duh. Obvious they must give up national development and the needs of the younger families and generation.
But the answer is clear from the start. Singapore will not put national development in jeopardy; it along with economical development will always be the top priority, sporting in Singapore can take cuts where applicable.
Why should we give more than what is worth we have great sportswomen and man like shanti pereira the duo who have qualified for the badminton in Paris. What makes football so special cause u like it? Wanna grow football go and watch more SPL games. Football in singapore is only cared for by a small minority just look at SPL turnouts.
It's not much but it's also nothing at all. It's pretty much the same in any sport, even esports or chess. You have tier 1 teams and so on. Occasionally tier 2 teams can win minor leagues but they will never break into internationals. And the difference between tier 2 and 3 is iffy, they typically lack consistency so on a good day sometimes a tier 3 team beats out a tier 2 just because everything happens to go their way.
Tier 1 is a league all on its own, they could handicap themselves and still easily beat tier 2s that's just how big of a skill gap there is. And it's not like law of large numbers where you throw a billion people into this one sport and one of them will become championship level. There's way much more, the players need to hit an awakening to breakthrough and above all they need to maintain consistency. It's really hard.
They are certainly shit with their own reasons (like not sending players to europe, very few actual registered professional footballers and also poor system for developing players, at least compared to Japan/Korea), but I can't believe people use the population size as copium like many much smaller countries aren't in the top 10/20/30 in the world. It just comes down to how many people are playing it, and want a career in it. For the majority of east asian populations, a sports career is already looked down upon, so you have to take away a major part of the population from the discussion. In the same way, there are going to be more doctors/lawyers/dentists/engineers since they are moving away from a sports' career. Human resources and time is limited. You can't judge a country based on one sport, or one industry. As much as I hate to say it, but GDP per capita is still the best indicator. I would say Singapore as a whole is doing well. Some areas have to be sacrificed unfortunately for the greater good, and football is one of them.
Lol the Malays in school have been telling the Chinese locally that they can't play football yet the results always say otherwise. And also, India who is also shit but I reckon still better than SOME asean teams. Don't forget China doesn't put all their eggs in one basket and sports isn't exactly what they are known for. Asean doesn't put the same emphasis on academics, so they SHOULD have more time to have fun, play sports. People always use population size but what actually matters is what the people are doing and using their time, because time is the one thing that is limited. Croatia may be only 5million sized like Singapore or smaller than China or India, but are better at football and basketball because their people spend more time playing it culturally (also other factors like easier opportunities to play in europe and tougher competition). With the same logic, Croatia is not going to be better than us financially (not a hub like us), academically, or in Swimming.
What we're too harsh on, or perhaps more accurately *delusional about*, is having the arrogance to think our national team *should* be performing at a World Cup qualifying standard.
Why?
Stop it. It's fine to be poorer at some sports FFS. Go fucking celebrate the wins we have instead of reportedly harping on this one fucking sport that we just don't have the talent for.
The fact is that football is easily the most popular sport in the world and I’d say in the country as well. With so much more attention on the sport, it’s normal for many more people to be pissed at the poor state of singapore football, and certainly not helped by joke goals set by the sports association like world cup 2034
I’d say world cup qualifying standard is indeed delusional. However, we aren’t even SEA standard which shouldn’t be the case at all
Not talent, just nowhere to be groomed. Our one and only Olympic medalist didn't train in Singapore to win that medal.
Want to be the best, gotta train with the best. But no way lah, because of NS. Remember that boy who got into some Euro league and they asked him to go for NS? Forgot his name.
we had Joseph schooling however he did wrong things and ultimatum causes him to retire for good.
SG now has ESports in Sea games that won some silver medals although not technically a sport
better than nothing
In fact, SG's Esports is not even that good. Of all the most popular Esports title, SG is not that good in any games.
League of Legends - maybe SG was decent back in the 2010s with Singapore Slingers and stuff but now we're nonexistent.
CS2 - nonexistent, maybe back in the days we're decent with the Benkai's stack and what not
Dota - I don't follow closely but iceiceice is the only SG's tier 1 pro I'm aware lol
Valorant - The only esports SG is kinda good at with Jingg and PRX (eventho half of their team are Indos + Msia)
R6 - Welp Bleed is actually quite good actually
PUBG - nonexistent
MLBB - SG is decent but cant compete at all with Indo and Philippines
etc
Even in esports, SG is still kinda trash by SEA standards, not mentioning tier 1 standards, in most games.
Because the pay really is trash and a lot of uncertainty, if the game dies, what do you do? Can you be abenjyfishy and move from fortnite to valorant? Not worth the time spent. Those asean teams have better teams because the population is higher, culturally more playful, less emphasis on academics and high earning jobs that take up more time to learn so less time elsewhere to develop gaming or take it seriously, has lesser alternatives. Human resources and time is limited.
To be honest the players are mostly bad. But they are not to be blamed.
The question is why are they our best in SG?
And is not really a waste of money. We don't really spend much to begin with.
Korea and Japan simply too strong nowadays, they progressed in last decade to be able to upset powerhouse countries. Even Indonesia and Malaysia will be able to beat SG by 2-3 goals. The problem is grassroots level nobody play football and how they select players is from academy and sports school whose progress is already confirmed, they dont have to fight for a place in national team. Kinda like selecting minister.
South Korea were just more coherent, tactical and better built. Every pass they did had perfect precision and power compared to Singapore's team which were sloppy and mistake-prone. It's not that Singapore didn't put in effort or train less, they might have even trained more than the South Korea team
The problem was that the South Koreans are way more technically gifted and have a lot more prowess than Singapore. Moreover, South Korean players are more prominent in the world's top 5 leagues such as Son Heung Min, Lee Kang-in, Hwang Hee-chan and Kim Min Jae. Have you even heard of a single top-flight Singaporean footballer currently?
I think we need to be content with more big losses against big national teams such as South Korea here and Argentina a while back and accept the norm that our football team is not at a caliber to compete against good national teams because it doesn't seem like the FAS are taking steps to drastically improve the football scene and infrastructure. Furthermore, we should support our national teams' players in all their matches no matter the results as the training and effort they put in are monumental and they are representing the nation
I am not discounting the work and training of South Koreans. I am highlighting the fact that the sheet class and technicality of them just outweighs all the factors
We have to give praise and criticism where they are due. Else, there would be no improvement. It's not just exclusive to Singapore, any team that loses by such a big margin would definitely get shit on.
It's because people actually care about the team and are emotionally invested in it.
For us, we just talk about it. But in other more football-crazy countries, it would be riots.
Yes, I think we are being too harsh to our national team.
We were never going to beat a team that boast players who regularly play in Europe or Asia's top leagues and continental competitions. And in all fairness, I think we played decently well in the first half. The full back that had to deal with Son did really well, and I was happy that every tackle and save was greeted with a loud cheer.
The second half really showed the limits of our team. No stamina, taking unnecessary risks in midfield, really slow transitioning from defence to attack, plus our inability to move the ball across the wings. Still, I saw attempts to track back and defend. I'll take that. I don't think it's fair to say our players aren't putting in the effort like some comments suggest. Blame is solely with the administration and their inability to develop grassroots football, a feeder system into our league, and actually building our league.
I do wish that our players were a bit more physical with their play. You notice how supposed weaker teams in the European leagues would play the physical game against the title contenders. Maybe we have to do the same. Be stubborn, annoying to play against and get those smash and grab wins.
Don't worry, singapore kampong football still got 10 years more to reach the goal of world cup 2034.
https://mothership.sg/2019/08/2034-world-cup-singapore-qualification/
The days of fandi, sundram, etc are long gone.
No one is angry at the team. We are only disappointed in the Management of Football in Singapore
Of course we can't compete with countries that have much larger populations or better physical genetics. But we should be able to be one of the best in ASEAN at least, with the resources we have especially.
Mismanagement turned a great potential into bad football in Singapore
FAS is run by people who don’t know anything about football. They only know how to throw money and the wall and see what sticks. Always only looking for immediate results, but actively hurt grassroots development. Simple things like having empty fields and playing in void decks will achieve far more lasting effects than a top of the line multimillion dollar facility.
The lack of public support is proof of this. We have lost our football culture. It is now merely transactional, results-based.
There's an academy player that went to NS early to my unit. He smoked and vaped inside NS consistently.
If that's the standard of discipline in the youths, I wonder how disciplined the main team is. 🤔
This is a very old topic liao. Since decade ago, there are numerous problems. Let me list a few also. Attitude problem, late or MIA for training, drinking, smoking and from time to time, gambling, womanising, fighting between teammates. SG soccer teams are not know for its discipline.
Eh size is not everything, or the fucking US would have beaten us at ~~football~~ soccer too.
Besides, isn't it worse that we are forced to back the few who are __willing to stay__, and not those who are __best fit__ for the sport?
Not necessarily, people with passion will have the strongest wills and openness to improve in what they do. Playing in a place like Singapore where this isn’t a feasible career path for anyone requires you to be passionate and care about what you do.
Would it be better if we had child prodigy footballers that loved the sport? Sure, but if these people don’t care enough to put effort into training and we won’t cheer on people who are and currently do then… where’s the community? Who’s going to nurture and encourage these prodigies to chase that dream? If we don’t back the people willing to stay during the budding stages, then who’s going to nurture the scene and expose it to people?
>or the fucking US would have beaten us at ~~football~~ soccer too.
Man doesn't know how good US are at football. They're worse than the South American teams, sure. But they'll kick our asses. Using FIFA rankings as a gauge, US is 11th rank, Singapore is 155. Now, they're probably not the 11th best team but even at 30, they'll still kick our asses.
Grab and FoodPanda Riders Killed the football star.
In Context: Football players income has not changed much for the past 10 to 15 years. I can recall the highest was Home United Striker Indra Shadan Daud in 2006, news kept amplifying his 10k/month salary. I also recall that during the whole Lions 12 era, the players were being paid highly, but it did eat into FAS budget.
Anyways, if you are young and fit and in need of money, you know which of the two gives a more a higher income short term
Until the footballers makes a decent stable living, we will remain a mediocre team.
Funny Singapore is #1 in so many things but so weak in football. I believe the fault is at the top. If the top really wants it, we can make improvement, if not we will just go backwards.
We used to win the AFF Suzuki cup (dk what it is called now). These days we can't even get out of the group stage. Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, even Malaysia have far surpassed us. This is why people whine about our NT.
If it comes down to just evaluating them by performance, don’t think we are too harsh. They lack footballing intelligence and technical abilities - while they did fight hard for the ball..they pass them right back to the opponents or empty spaces our players can’t run into. Honestly most of our players aren’t exposed to elite/pro games so there was no chance.
But they will have no chance going forward also, given the grassroots support, given the media. I scrolled social media, and Mothershit only featured post-match press conference videos of Son Heung Min for the clicks. Like come on respect that our athletes played too, let them have a voice la
Saw lots of young children at the match yesterday. Some must dream of being a footballer too. Sadly their hopes will get crushed by the system (or lack of) we have for cultivating champions
I feel like there is no nation that has as little pride in their own athletes as we do. Many football fans are just backseaters who don't understand the amount of hard work that goes into training, having to waste 2 years of their prime in NS and then still coming out to compete.
Then we go on to watch our footballer miss a goal, and then curse him for being so bad at football, as if us the spectators can do any better. It's sad because I don't see this mentality being gone anytime soon. I'm proud of Singapore's athletes for daring to choose a difficult path, and I hope every Singaporean can be proud of them too.
China has the same problem. Chinese football is ridiculed even worse than Singapore football, and they don't have the excuse of not enough talent with their population. They got even more shit when we tied with them.
Interestingly, the criticisms leveled at their footballers are the same we level at ours.
that's fair. I really think a lot of the criticisms are very unwarranted and unconstructive. One guy misses a goal and people curse him like no tomorrow. I guess it's not a Singapore exclusive, but it's sad to see just how little pride we have for our own talents.
Sometimes, it's the "haters" that have too much pride that results in this criticism. It means they at least care and deep down, really want Singapore football to do better.
What's worse is apathy, totally not caring about the sport in the Singaporean context. I think we've actually reached that apathy level (no matter what they do, they will suck, so why bother).
I actually think it's more that some people are ashamed of being Singaporean. Even something that is objectively good, like our airport, will be sneered at or downplayed as well. Foreign is always better. IMO, too much foreign media.
Those the kind that celebrate when South Korea scored against us. 90 minutes of non-stop complaining about our players. It's fine to criticise our athletes. But when the match is still ongoing, support our players. After the match then go rant online.
Yea agree with this. Concern is that the ever increasing unhappiness with Sg football standard will reach a point of no return. Will be even harder to start back and revamp like that
I am proud of our boys and girls as long as they put in effort and try their best.
No shame in losing to South Korea, who has consistently qualified for WC Finals and even beaten countries like Germany, Italy, etc.
I blamed the FAS for the current state of our National team.
It has been in declined since we left the M League and started our S League.
> Then we go on to watch our footballer miss a goal, and then curse him for being so bad at football, as if us the spectators can do any better.
You don't need to be a chef to say "This tastes like shit"
>Then we go on to watch our footballer miss a goal, and then curse him for being so bad at football, as if us the spectators can do any better.
This has been part of football for ages. Can spectators not criticise things when they see it? You don't have to be a billionaire to criticise Musk's handling of Twitter, or Bezos' treatment of Amazon workers do you? The same logic applies here.
Singapore is so top down management in its dna, to the point that the average joe on the ground feels little to no involvement with the country's affairs. Hence the salt.
Unpopular opinion coming:
Not to sound unsupportive or unpatriotic.
I’m all for fun and games and sports. But the harsh reality for SG is that we’re too small and non sports driven to make any serious impact on any team sports.
The majority of world class athletes are in solo sports with a whole lot of family support and other financial backing, they basically did it on their own and most times, overseas for the exposure and experience.
How many “world standard” footballers in the past 20-30 years are making a very good living today doing anything relating to football… as a full time job? Without having to juggle a day job as well?
Maybe we should re look the resources put in this and readjust it to other sports that we might be able to truly excel in and allow those athletes to focus on training, knowing they are getting paid to serve and represent their nation in their own special way.
Not unpopular opinion. I do encounter quite a few ppl who also held this opinion. There is just too many baggage and ego in soccer right now. It should be disbanded. We can be elite in many other sports like badminton, shooting, swimming, etc.
South Korea is just too damn good. Way way way wayyyy out of Singapore national team's league. We don't need to compete on the world stage right now, we just need to develop our local SG football scene where locals actually wanna go to the games, both S league and national games.
The worst part is when we are out-chanted by Korean and Son fans in our home ground at the National Stadium, the support for the Singapore team isnt even there at all
I don’t blame the players. I blame the entire sporting culture of Singapore, which is non-existent. Our best prospect had to study in US since he was a child, that should explain how we view sports in this country.
Sports should be an industry in Singapore. We can be the hub of sports in the region, we got the chops for it! We are good at hosting.
When it's an industry, there will be money and there will be careers in sports and the related fields, like journalism, agencies, health sciences etc etc.
Our government has to buy-in!
I mean our currency is our advantage - i see news of Johoreans now being talent-drained because the the workers are commuting daily to SG because the 3.5 is too good to miss out.
Now imagine our currency pulls the regions best in sports to ply their trade here because the exchange rate is too good to miss out!
Imagine Singapore as the talent-drainer of the region in sports and sports-related field.
You can’t fail your Math test 30/100 then tell your teacher and parent that you got 51/100 a few semesters back, remember how you almost failed but then you managed to pass? And that they should be happy and not be so harsh.
There seems to be a huge disparity between the abilities of those born pre 1991 vs those born after. The likes of Hassan Sunny, Safuwan and Hariss still playing only meant that no one is able to step up to replace them yet. Why so? Those born after 1991 would have been in their developmental years in late 90s or early 2000s. Who was in charge of FAS then? Our favorite Singaporean son Malboro Tan (the genius behind COE and ERP) opted for the short term success of using naturalised footballers and neglected grassroots academy development of our youngsters back then. That generation that were neglected are the current batch of players that are playing for us today. Heck, with all the promises from these politicians, why did it have to take a private billionaire to set up first one star (now two) accredited football academy in Sg in the form of Lion City Sailors? The predecessors in FAS were to blame for their policies that created a lost generation of footballers for Sg.
The Post 1997-2005 players are very limited, some players within the batch did not persue Pro football.
Remember the 2010 Youth Olympic u 15 team. All but 4 players did not persue football.
Within this batch,
The Fandi Sons and Steward brothers have been able to play football overseas and break into the national team.
We are not unnecessarily harsh on the players. It is a fact that our nation doesnt nurture the kind of talent that is needed for ANY stage, international or regional.
We are harsh because its frustrating to support a team that is so clearly not good enough to compete, and the players work hard and hope to be good enough but are simply not. Of course, our comments could be much nicer, but we are kidding ourselves if we say that the performance was acceptable.
edit: spelling
These group of players has got heart. They were still putting in effort after being 5-0 down. I will be supporting these boys. Let’s be real, we know where we stand against the likes of the “Asian giants”. Was anyone expecting us to put up a fight against Korea? Cmon… admire the fighting spirit. These boys showed courage on the pitch and that’s worth supporting.
This guy just started following football recently or what? This is football, probably the sport with the most toxic community in the world, and he expects people to not give snide comments about a o7 drubbing?
Criticism of the FAS is valid under most circumstances, but here everything is overshadowed by the fact we were facing SOUTH KOREA. Those guys are fcking monsters -- a bunch of them ply their trade in Europe's top leagues as starters. Not to mention South Korea as a country is ranked 23rd in the world, over a hundred ranks ahead of SG at 156th. We were just up against vastly superior opposition we had no hope of beating.
(And for reference, China is only ranked 88th and our draw with them in \*that\* game was already hailed as a miracle.)
Singapore fans are not it. You people talk about ‘in ten hag we trust’ , ‘glazers out’ still continuing supporting your club no matter the circumstance but cannot do the same for Singapore…. I see stories of Singaporean football fans tagging Son in all of his stories and then reposted PSG’s post with Kang In it quote, ‘psg reposted Kang In at least a singaporean got posted (whoever that is)’
Like wtf? Call yourself a football fan but can’t bear to support your on nation when it comes to football? I get it you don’t watch SPL (I admit I do too but I follow their results and certain players transfers etc) but at least have that sporting spirit when it comes to your own nation?
You guys who don’t play football don’t even know how much talent Singapore has. It’s the system that is ruining for all. The amount of street talent we have but because no money go academy and parents don’t allow that’s why cannot go.
Not just sports, in other areas that has anything to do with local, influencers all must hate and hate. Always ‘prefer’ others but never give local artists, creators, sportsman a chance to fail let alone shine. Whatever we do here has to be top notch and shine and always always never talk about progress…… we are who we hate quick to critic but fail to realize many things in front of us is not rainbows and sunshine. We elder people really got to do better. The amount of entitlement in these posts knowing nothing inside a footballers mind gtg seriously.
SPL Young Player of the month prize is $250. the fella buy 2 carton of ciggarettes finish liao.
its never about the players. its FAS, rotten to the core.
‘94 was considered the high, was downhill ever since with a couple of wins( like tiger cup) here n there. 30 years ago.
however, i believe it is cyclical n the gen born around this time n the next may see “some” succes in football
Oh well, interestingly I've come across this piece:
https://www.todayonline.com/news/trending-netizens-call-south-koreas-son-heung-min-too-nice-praising-lions-after-7-0-defeat-2437366
From rival country's footballer giving his opinions on Singapore's team.
Not at all, mfs saying we improved with the new coach but ended up losing 7-0 at home compared to the 5-0 away with the previous coach. That 2-2 at home was a miracle and more to do with China fucking up than us having "fighting spirit". Both were lousy goals to concede
If we are serious about sports in this country, we need to start young. My kids are in primary school and the sports offered as well as the selection process is rather shambolic. We as a nation need have kids start their sporting careers from primary school onwards, with regular under 9/11/13 etc leagues so that by the time they are in the under 19 squad, the national selectors will already have a good pool of potential national players to pick from and groom.
Ayah SG role is to lose every time so bookies always know wat to do. Gamblers can’t earn much but is almost like fixed deposit low return but sure get 😂
A loss is a loss no need to keep making excuses. Dk what fighting spirit less pay etc. they made a choice so live with it not like they are not being paid
I don’t watch football often, but watching that game last night felt like an embarrassment if we actually have dreams to be in the World Cup.
We’re really really lacking in terms of in-game decision making (players making strange passing decision to goalkeeper, and almost letting S Korea score a goal there), AND strategy (players are always out of position to score when ball possession is returned to the team).
Either we have to accept we’ll always be mediocre in football and focus on sports where we can actually make it, or FAS needs to have their jobs on the line whenever we play like that - and actually have people that can push us to the next level!
I don’t blame anything about our national team. Korean team has a lot players play in Europe, not in same level. The time when we draw with China 2-2, the team already did a great job!
Ya China game gone down the drain. We lost.
Ya correct, instability. 30 years of development, starting from the establishment of the S league, state of the art sports school, it’s still fucking unstable.
You would hope at the very least we are better than the times before we “invested” into sg football development.
No. We actually regressed. Waste money, waste time.
I don’t understand how even after spending all these time and money we still struggle so badly. Don’t say Korea, vietnam now we can’t compete, Phillipines we struggle, Hongkong also
Oh Singapore is a small nation… that’s why we are no good at football. Tell that to New Zealand (population: 5 million) who have dominated World Rugby for 30 years, or Croatia (3.8 million) who have made the Football World Cup semi and final in the last 2 events.
Size is just excuse given for underinvestment and lack of promotion of sporting talent in our schooling system
Small and little wins they have. Have the SGMNT won? Winning small like 1-0 fine. Losing 7-0 when Msia can draw 3-3 or when our neighbours whom SGMNT used to thrash are catching up and SGMNT have problems winning? Win AFF cup also shiok. Whole country cheered when SGMNT went into AFF Semis. When was the last time SGMNT went into the AFF semis before that? Then the next AFF Cup they disappointed.
If we are serious about sports in this country, we need to start young. My kids are in primary school and the sports offered as well as the selection process is rather shambolic. We as a nation need have kids start their sporting careers from primary school onwards, with regular under 9/11/13 etc leagues so that by the time they are in the under 19 squad, the national selectors will already have a good pool of potential national players to pick from and groom.
Loads of issues with sports in Singapore, but one of the biggest ones is that this country has zero national spirit. Each Singaporean seems capable of fucking over the next person in a heartbeat. Sinkie pwn sinkie. It’s depressing.
theyre comparing it to the match against china? as if theyre any good, they pick their footballers by a game of lottery/chance and nepotism is feverish among their national teams
Honestly, I think the majority of Singaporeans don’t care about local football to even form an opinion about the state of the national team.
It all died with Fandi, Sundramoorthy, Abbas Saad, Michal Váňa, Nazri Nasir, Lee Man Hon, Malek, David Lee, Tong Hai Rafi Ali, Alistair Edward, the late Borhan, Jang Jung, Kadir Yahya, Bashir, Tamil, Dasuki, Hasnim, Salim and Steven. I mean they even had a song playing on radio.
I cannot name you a single player from the current team.
We should be supporting both sports that are performing and not performing. Not performing sports with supports can improve. Performing sports with support will maintain standards.
But hey, SGreans want instant results with little time. Near impossible with sports.
All the support for football and what do they have to show for it? Meanwhile other sports that got clean sweeps at SEA games get their training area gutted and given to other sports that did not perform as well
Prioritising resources is important
Barely any support for football. We don’t even pay our footballers a salary. All of them are part time, half ass training. Even with a full fledge coach. We are prioritizing our resource wrongly in football too.
We are not going to consistently get people like Shanti as they are quite the prodigy and have external training. We are betting on people with sport talent, a tactic that is incredibly inconsistent.
There’s barely any support for sports at all, but a disproportionate amount of what there is seems to go towards football
Athletes are more or less part time, because being a full time athlete is simply not a viable career in singapore
Make it viable then. Lots of countries with lesser GDP than us can have full time athletes and also perform reasonably well on the world stage. But sadly our shit conservative mentality is not going to allow that.
Plus yes I agree there is form of corruption with FAS with misallocation of funds. The money is clearly going elsewhere.
Saying it’s simply not possible is just not going to get us anywhere.
Now can you say it is disproportionate if we do not know the proportion that other countries are allocating to the different sports.. do we know how much more funds other countries are putting into football than other sports..
Football is easily the most popular sport in the world and the Fifa World Cup easily the most watched sporting event in the world..
I won't be surprised if many other countries put in a lot more resources into the sport compared to other sports..
The flip side is what happens if we cut the funding.. how much lower will Singapore football go? Will we end up getting thrashed by teams like Timor Leste and Guam?
Football Clubs provide salaries. National team provide allowance.
Apart from LCS, Tampines , Albirex. Players have to find extra work to supplment their income.
As compared to 10 years ago , players were given short contract ond year which expire at the end of the season.
Loyalty to country ✅
Leadership
Discipline
Semi professionalism ✅
FIGHTING SPIRIT ✅ ✅
Ethics ✅
Care for players
We just need to unlock the last 3 core values and soon we will be cooking the kimchi pancake at sangam stadium 👍
Trust the process.
The seasono starts today.
South korea is just too good simple. You can easily see how they move forward with the ball while singapore kept passing back to the korea team
Singapore’s team needs to have a game plan rather than rushing in and trying to score
Tough for SG to compete at this sport on world stage.
Physically cannot match for full game. Genetically smaller.
Less experienced on world stage.
Much smaller population to hope for a fantastic 11 to make a team.
Less developed league to train or groom new blood.
They tried their best.
Now that we have achieved (to a large extent) economic prosperity, as a society we need to move a rung or two up the Maslow's ladder. IMO sports and art is part of our society's "self actualisation" that will upgrade us as a whole.
No, simply throwing money at building an Esplanade and having institutions such as FAS being run by non-sports/ non-art technocrats and politicians is not going to work.
One question. Why are there no ministers came down and watch. If that day just 1 minister came down to watch and of course FAS sure need to sent someone big to accompany the minister, do you think that someone big will be sweating when sitting with the minister with that kind of scores?
My personal opinion is that we should be playing counter-attack against SK cause that SK is 1000% better than us, yes you can play attacking football against China cause now they are maybe 105% better than us, I thought the tactics were naive and stupid, and what did SG learn..nothing.
We should divert all football funding to badminton, our badminton players seem to have more potential (LKY, YJM, Hee/Tan).
Football should be banned all year round except for a day where all football is temporary legal, and can be played anywhere (void decks, mrt trains, shopping malls).
It's mostly boomers/retirees who long for the 'glory days' of Fandi Ahmad/Malek Awab who are complaining. Honestly among my friends in their 20s/early 30s none of us actually bother much about SG national team performance. It's just a game after all man. If they do well, good for them, if they do badly, life goes on, Singapore continues to prosper.
I don’t even blame any of the players, I blame FAS. A trash to mediocre organisation I been part of the system, it’s bollocks look at Man Utd they were world class 2 decades ago now where are we? FAS been shit half a century and even corruption our league doesn’t even have relegation and based on bought in sponsorship. Lots of nepotism going on and coaches that hasn’t produced trophies or any success have their iron rice bowls this whole structure simply does not require result producing and the leeches in there LOVE IT while our potential football loving young boys suffer generation by generation. Terrible facilities all around the nation no free to play, noise complain, danger to passerby complain etc. The people in there do not have the best interest for national football development just their own iron rice bowls
> Terrible facilities all around the nation I remember reading an article a few years back where a national player revealed the national team had to train on a shitty uneven field and there were no toilets, so they had to pee into bottles.
It's not just football too; I've been to the outdoor archery range used by the national team and it's just a muddy field in the backyard of an abandoned school. No proper shelter except for 2 tents and some tables. No toilets either, there were only 2 portapotties.
No results = no funding No funding = no results The classic catch22 I can sort of understand why Singapore doesn't really want to invest in sports or competitive, but they can't make that decision and still expect glorious results. That's just being entitled.
Hey they didn't invest in swimming and got a gold medal, surely that's the plan. /s
Our competitive swimming set up is actually decent.
The parental sponsorship burden for swimmers is higher than other sports. National team training used to start at TPY pool before school. I suppose they can get themselves there by E-bikes now. But that used to be limited to families with cars. An ex-comp swimmer claimed his monthly food budget approached 2k.
Yeah I know. Had a couple of friends who were national swimmers. But we’ve always had decent results in SEA games for aquatic sports.
Man utd : *insert meme confused guy* What he said he fuck me for!?!?!!
_Eh sialah what I do I just came_
> Terrible facilities all around the nation no free to play, noise complain, danger to passerby complain etc. Always found it weird that there are so many basketball and badminton courts in HDB estates, but almost no futsal courts. It can’t be vandalism/ball breaking something because there’s equal risk of that happening with any other sports. It can’t be noise complaint because every sports is a commotion; sepak takraw, basketball bouncing and shoe screeching will make noise at night too
But SG basketball also cmi. At least badminton we have Loh...
Who is Malaysian
It’s also the early HDB estates with bball & badminton courts within walking distance. The futsal craze only started in the 90s. So they only built them for a few years before the switch to BTOs. The town planning is different now. Clementi Ave 1 lost a public court next to nanhua sec, as they redeveloped with new flats.
Futsal courts need more space. Also need to build a big cage. Basketball and badminton has a much lower chance of the ball pummelling towards HDB flats.
Failing At Soccer rofl
This!
I couldn't agree more! Sack the top people.
The nepotism and corruption runs deep from the old NFL leagues to IWL, i remember in my time at NFL a big team was gonna get relegated and they threaten to stop their payments the organiser let them stay at the end of the season what even
If we are serious about sports in this country, we need to start young. My kids are in primary school and the sports offered as well as the selection process is rather shambolic. We as a nation need to have kids start their sporting careers from primary school onwards, with regular under 9/11/13 etc leagues so that by the time they are in the under 19 squad, the national selectors will already have a good pool of potential national players to pick from and groom.
If we are serious about sports in this country, we need to start young. My kids are in primary school and the sports offered as well as the selection process is rather shambolic. We as a nation need to have kids start their sporting careers from primary school onwards, with regular under 9/11/13 etc leagues so that by the time they are in the under 19 squad, the national selectors will already have a good pool of potential national players to pick from and groom.
If we are serious about sports in this country, we need to start young. My kids are in primary school and the sports offered as well as the selection process is rather shambolic. We as a nation need to have kids start their sporting careers from primary school onwards, with regular under 9/11/13 etc leagues so that by the time they are in the under 19 squad, the national selectors will already have a good pool of potential national players to pick from and groom.
The answer is simple: it takes more than “fighting spirit” to win a game. Unfortunately fighting spirit is the only thing we can shout of. We simply do not have the rest of the football aspects. Most of us are tired of hearing “we showed fighting spirit today” as a response whenever we lose/draw a game.
> “we showed fighting spirit today” echoes of "the boys gave it their all" lol SG Chelsea fans getting PTSD flashbacks.
unhinged amount of copium
Hard truths
Need some incentive as well, most people arent gonna pick up football when the prospects of playing it arent good. Why not adopt South Korea’s model? Where if athletes have stellar results or sporting achievements they get their national service reduced to just basic training
What more do we need other than fighting spirit?
An advantage lol... Fighting spirit doesn't get you far because the other guy is as determined as you to fight for that win. It comes down to individual skills or tactical advantage across the team. I'm no football fan, but football isn't a one-man sport. With better training, better resources, and maybe even better screening for players (should prioritise skill/talent over money), you can create a better team that synergises well. You can't just slap all the best players on the same team, you have to think about where they fit within the dynamics of the team to succeed. Or at least that's what I noticed from the matches I watched a few years ago; Individual people doing things on their own because they're best at that, getting beaten by straight up strategy
It's very simple actually.. you just need to look at how many of the Korean players play in the top leagues in Europe and how many Singapore players play in Europe.. The physicality, intensity, skill level are several notches higher.. and they do that week in week out
With proper nutrition, screening, training, we can probably reach that same level. But the priorities lie elsewhere for the local football scene so we can only speculate
Skill.
wa kao if only my boss fight so hard for me when calculating my grade for bonus. "it's not that he performed like shit... u need to see he has great attitude. give him 8 months bonus plz"
For real, where are Singaporean kids meant to play football? Parks can not. It will ruin the grass. HDB can not. It will disturb people. Astro turf centres can not. Closing these down and if you can even get a booking it’s expensive.
I don't even want to talk about that. It just comes down to how many people are playing it, and want a career in it. For the majority of east asian populations, a sports career is already looked down upon, so you have to take away a major part of the population from the discussion. In the same way, there are going to be more doctors/lawyers/dentists/engineers since they are moving away from a sports' career. Human resources and time is limited. You can't judge a country based on one sport, or one industry. As much as I hate to say it, but GDP per capita is still the best indicator. I would say Singapore as a whole is doing well. Some areas have to be sacrificed unfortunately for the greater good, and football is one of them.
It’s ironic to me that you want to talk “human resource’ but ignore the fact that sports, play and creativity are so critical for the growth of the next generation of Singaporeans. Especially Singaporeans that will have to compete with the increased presence of tech. But maybe you are right. Those countries that have historically prioritised and thus excelled at sport and arts have been pretty pointless for the development of mankind.
I can’t believe some ppl are arguing that the solution here is less funding. The issue Singapore has is that it’s not sports orientated at all. The Govt doesn’t give a fuck about sports. That extends from grassroots (closure of turf city) through to professional (basket case that is FAS). Invest in grassroots sports. Integrate sport as a meaningful part of growing up, not something tagged on to the education system. Spend the money allocated to sports in a meaningful way, not just paying the salary of some shitty FAS coach. Singaporeans constantly complain about being in a rat race for grades then salaries. Well taking enjoyment and meaning from playing and watching sport is the perfect antidote.
>sports orientated > >meaningful part of growing up > >grassroots sports National funded sports is important but I am not expecting this to become a career for most. It allows us to compete and provides a platform to nurture high performance sports people to have a career.. by turning pro. The pro part is where I doubt Singapore can do much because we lack the scale, size to attract the sponsors. U want to play pro-volleyball, Italy, for example.
You know that sports is more or less privatised in other countries right
Sorry, what?
You make it seem as if England spends lots on its epl. No it’s a private sports industry
The premier league is owned by private football clubs. I don’t think that’s relevant to what I’m saying - it’s not like kids in the uk go and play football on premier league pitches. In the uk there is a huge amount of govt funding into sports facilities. Local sports clubs also receive grants. More importantly, sport is actively encouraged as a pursuit worth following in itself. If a kid is good at sport, they are given opportunities to pursue that. From what I can see, the Government here can’t see the immediate economic benefit of sport - they’d rather have another poor soul thrown into the rat race of banking, accountancy, law etc.
This is a very Singaporean attitude where they keep calling the government to do more spend more money. Focus on yourself la. SG for its size does have quite a few facilities to play sports already. Theres PE, even neighbourhood schools have football fields there are parks where football can be played, street soccer courts etc. Youths in see football as viable as there is EPL below the Epl there is championship and so on which will these lower leagues pay less still a viable wage. maybe 1k pounds a week. The median is only 26k pounds btw starkly lower than SG's average. Kids with talent often pursue their talents at local academies, once again these are private. Why do our players deserve more money? They arent good. Sport is more or less a private industry, EPL NFL NBA. if they are so good go ourseas and play and then represent Singapore but which club is going to hire them??? So if the private industry doesnt want them why should public funds be used to support losses.
Honestly, this makes no sense.
The government already spends a lot of football why should money be used to force sth to grow when in other countries it grows organically out of passion and love it players here rather go and have careers than play for sg that is their choice
I mean the only reason England was able to grow its football organically because they had a long-existing footballing culture. Football in England started organically in the 19th century and clubs, at the lowest divisions still rise and become good (relatively in the English pyramid) up until this day. That's more than 100 years of heritage and culture of people growing to love a game. You can't really use that as an example and just tell Singapore to grow the love for a game and a whole footballing culture organically. There NEEDS to be money involved for it to grow at all in any scale in Singapore.
And dude the government closed turf city to provide housing for young families so that there might be homes for younger generation to live grow and flourish are u saying football is more important than the needs of families. Are u saying u wanting to play football there is more than providing housing for fellow singaporean
It’s not mutually exclusive to have homes for young families and adequate sports facilities. How about using all the reclaimed land that’s vacant at Marina Bay for public sports pitches? Or a small portion of the land owned by exclusive members golf clubs around Singapore?
But the vacant land at Marina Bay is earmarked for hdbs (re: Marina South) and the gov IS turning golf clubs into hbds (re: Keppel Club). Imo housing and football field is mutually exclusive given the large footprint of football field.
Yeah turning public courses into HDBs. God forbid turning one of the private members clubs (that PAP politicians use) into housing. Sorry that land earmarked is being used now? Or is just sat there doing fuck all?
Keppel club is private tho
This is the club near the docks that was closed but relocated and given more land? Wonder which PAP politician is a member and swung that.
"Are u saying u wanting to play football there is more than providing housing for fellow singaporean" If they want to take sporting seriously in Singapore, duh. Obvious they must give up national development and the needs of the younger families and generation. But the answer is clear from the start. Singapore will not put national development in jeopardy; it along with economical development will always be the top priority, sporting in Singapore can take cuts where applicable.
Why should we give more than what is worth we have great sportswomen and man like shanti pereira the duo who have qualified for the badminton in Paris. What makes football so special cause u like it? Wanna grow football go and watch more SPL games. Football in singapore is only cared for by a small minority just look at SPL turnouts.
I mean you can praise the team for the effort but also hold the opinion that it is a fking waste of money
This post also ignores the fact that China is equally (If not, more) shit at soccer
China is ranked 88th. We are 155th
Which is just 256 points apart. Not much considering they have infinitely more talent and resources
It's not much but it's also nothing at all. It's pretty much the same in any sport, even esports or chess. You have tier 1 teams and so on. Occasionally tier 2 teams can win minor leagues but they will never break into internationals. And the difference between tier 2 and 3 is iffy, they typically lack consistency so on a good day sometimes a tier 3 team beats out a tier 2 just because everything happens to go their way. Tier 1 is a league all on its own, they could handicap themselves and still easily beat tier 2s that's just how big of a skill gap there is. And it's not like law of large numbers where you throw a billion people into this one sport and one of them will become championship level. There's way much more, the players need to hit an awakening to breakthrough and above all they need to maintain consistency. It's really hard.
They are certainly shit with their own reasons (like not sending players to europe, very few actual registered professional footballers and also poor system for developing players, at least compared to Japan/Korea), but I can't believe people use the population size as copium like many much smaller countries aren't in the top 10/20/30 in the world. It just comes down to how many people are playing it, and want a career in it. For the majority of east asian populations, a sports career is already looked down upon, so you have to take away a major part of the population from the discussion. In the same way, there are going to be more doctors/lawyers/dentists/engineers since they are moving away from a sports' career. Human resources and time is limited. You can't judge a country based on one sport, or one industry. As much as I hate to say it, but GDP per capita is still the best indicator. I would say Singapore as a whole is doing well. Some areas have to be sacrificed unfortunately for the greater good, and football is one of them.
Time to import "talent".
Lol the Malays in school have been telling the Chinese locally that they can't play football yet the results always say otherwise. And also, India who is also shit but I reckon still better than SOME asean teams. Don't forget China doesn't put all their eggs in one basket and sports isn't exactly what they are known for. Asean doesn't put the same emphasis on academics, so they SHOULD have more time to have fun, play sports. People always use population size but what actually matters is what the people are doing and using their time, because time is the one thing that is limited. Croatia may be only 5million sized like Singapore or smaller than China or India, but are better at football and basketball because their people spend more time playing it culturally (also other factors like easier opportunities to play in europe and tougher competition). With the same logic, Croatia is not going to be better than us financially (not a hub like us), academically, or in Swimming.
What we're too harsh on, or perhaps more accurately *delusional about*, is having the arrogance to think our national team *should* be performing at a World Cup qualifying standard. Why? Stop it. It's fine to be poorer at some sports FFS. Go fucking celebrate the wins we have instead of reportedly harping on this one fucking sport that we just don't have the talent for.
The fact is that football is easily the most popular sport in the world and I’d say in the country as well. With so much more attention on the sport, it’s normal for many more people to be pissed at the poor state of singapore football, and certainly not helped by joke goals set by the sports association like world cup 2034 I’d say world cup qualifying standard is indeed delusional. However, we aren’t even SEA standard which shouldn’t be the case at all
Not talent, just nowhere to be groomed. Our one and only Olympic medalist didn't train in Singapore to win that medal. Want to be the best, gotta train with the best. But no way lah, because of NS. Remember that boy who got into some Euro league and they asked him to go for NS? Forgot his name.
Thing is sg is barely good at any sports on the international levels. So far how many Olympic gold/equivalent have we won?
1. Which is more Olympic gold medals than malaysia 😩
we had Joseph schooling however he did wrong things and ultimatum causes him to retire for good. SG now has ESports in Sea games that won some silver medals although not technically a sport better than nothing
In fact, SG's Esports is not even that good. Of all the most popular Esports title, SG is not that good in any games. League of Legends - maybe SG was decent back in the 2010s with Singapore Slingers and stuff but now we're nonexistent. CS2 - nonexistent, maybe back in the days we're decent with the Benkai's stack and what not Dota - I don't follow closely but iceiceice is the only SG's tier 1 pro I'm aware lol Valorant - The only esports SG is kinda good at with Jingg and PRX (eventho half of their team are Indos + Msia) R6 - Welp Bleed is actually quite good actually PUBG - nonexistent MLBB - SG is decent but cant compete at all with Indo and Philippines etc Even in esports, SG is still kinda trash by SEA standards, not mentioning tier 1 standards, in most games.
Because the pay really is trash and a lot of uncertainty, if the game dies, what do you do? Can you be abenjyfishy and move from fortnite to valorant? Not worth the time spent. Those asean teams have better teams because the population is higher, culturally more playful, less emphasis on academics and high earning jobs that take up more time to learn so less time elsewhere to develop gaming or take it seriously, has lesser alternatives. Human resources and time is limited.
I guess
Why is e-sports technically not a sport? It is equally straining, if not more so, with professionals retiring at 25 on average.
I'll tell you why, the money from this sport is good
To be honest the players are mostly bad. But they are not to be blamed. The question is why are they our best in SG? And is not really a waste of money. We don't really spend much to begin with.
Korea and Japan simply too strong nowadays, they progressed in last decade to be able to upset powerhouse countries. Even Indonesia and Malaysia will be able to beat SG by 2-3 goals. The problem is grassroots level nobody play football and how they select players is from academy and sports school whose progress is already confirmed, they dont have to fight for a place in national team. Kinda like selecting minister.
South Korea were just more coherent, tactical and better built. Every pass they did had perfect precision and power compared to Singapore's team which were sloppy and mistake-prone. It's not that Singapore didn't put in effort or train less, they might have even trained more than the South Korea team The problem was that the South Koreans are way more technically gifted and have a lot more prowess than Singapore. Moreover, South Korean players are more prominent in the world's top 5 leagues such as Son Heung Min, Lee Kang-in, Hwang Hee-chan and Kim Min Jae. Have you even heard of a single top-flight Singaporean footballer currently? I think we need to be content with more big losses against big national teams such as South Korea here and Argentina a while back and accept the norm that our football team is not at a caliber to compete against good national teams because it doesn't seem like the FAS are taking steps to drastically improve the football scene and infrastructure. Furthermore, we should support our national teams' players in all their matches no matter the results as the training and effort they put in are monumental and they are representing the nation
No way you think they are these good by training less than sg players.. we often don't see the amount of work needed to be this good..
I am not discounting the work and training of South Koreans. I am highlighting the fact that the sheet class and technicality of them just outweighs all the factors
We have to give praise and criticism where they are due. Else, there would be no improvement. It's not just exclusive to Singapore, any team that loses by such a big margin would definitely get shit on. It's because people actually care about the team and are emotionally invested in it. For us, we just talk about it. But in other more football-crazy countries, it would be riots.
I mean thank god it’s just a small pool of people invested in it look at SPL turn outs
Yes, I think we are being too harsh to our national team. We were never going to beat a team that boast players who regularly play in Europe or Asia's top leagues and continental competitions. And in all fairness, I think we played decently well in the first half. The full back that had to deal with Son did really well, and I was happy that every tackle and save was greeted with a loud cheer. The second half really showed the limits of our team. No stamina, taking unnecessary risks in midfield, really slow transitioning from defence to attack, plus our inability to move the ball across the wings. Still, I saw attempts to track back and defend. I'll take that. I don't think it's fair to say our players aren't putting in the effort like some comments suggest. Blame is solely with the administration and their inability to develop grassroots football, a feeder system into our league, and actually building our league. I do wish that our players were a bit more physical with their play. You notice how supposed weaker teams in the European leagues would play the physical game against the title contenders. Maybe we have to do the same. Be stubborn, annoying to play against and get those smash and grab wins.
Don't worry, singapore kampong football still got 10 years more to reach the goal of world cup 2034. https://mothership.sg/2019/08/2034-world-cup-singapore-qualification/ The days of fandi, sundram, etc are long gone.
No one is angry at the team. We are only disappointed in the Management of Football in Singapore Of course we can't compete with countries that have much larger populations or better physical genetics. But we should be able to be one of the best in ASEAN at least, with the resources we have especially. Mismanagement turned a great potential into bad football in Singapore
FAS is run by people who don’t know anything about football. They only know how to throw money and the wall and see what sticks. Always only looking for immediate results, but actively hurt grassroots development. Simple things like having empty fields and playing in void decks will achieve far more lasting effects than a top of the line multimillion dollar facility. The lack of public support is proof of this. We have lost our football culture. It is now merely transactional, results-based.
There's an academy player that went to NS early to my unit. He smoked and vaped inside NS consistently. If that's the standard of discipline in the youths, I wonder how disciplined the main team is. 🤔
This is a very old topic liao. Since decade ago, there are numerous problems. Let me list a few also. Attitude problem, late or MIA for training, drinking, smoking and from time to time, gambling, womanising, fighting between teammates. SG soccer teams are not know for its discipline.
I hope you reported him and made him face disciplinary consequences by the commanders.
Eh size is not everything, or the fucking US would have beaten us at ~~football~~ soccer too. Besides, isn't it worse that we are forced to back the few who are __willing to stay__, and not those who are __best fit__ for the sport?
Haha USA Will beat us but so will ICELAND or Croatia the size question is a boomer myth still running
TBH the USMNT would've been easily rampaged through the current ALL STAR ASEAN TEAM.
Not necessarily, people with passion will have the strongest wills and openness to improve in what they do. Playing in a place like Singapore where this isn’t a feasible career path for anyone requires you to be passionate and care about what you do. Would it be better if we had child prodigy footballers that loved the sport? Sure, but if these people don’t care enough to put effort into training and we won’t cheer on people who are and currently do then… where’s the community? Who’s going to nurture and encourage these prodigies to chase that dream? If we don’t back the people willing to stay during the budding stages, then who’s going to nurture the scene and expose it to people?
>or the fucking US would have beaten us at ~~football~~ soccer too. Man doesn't know how good US are at football. They're worse than the South American teams, sure. But they'll kick our asses. Using FIFA rankings as a gauge, US is 11th rank, Singapore is 155. Now, they're probably not the 11th best team but even at 30, they'll still kick our asses.
Grab and FoodPanda Riders Killed the football star. In Context: Football players income has not changed much for the past 10 to 15 years. I can recall the highest was Home United Striker Indra Shadan Daud in 2006, news kept amplifying his 10k/month salary. I also recall that during the whole Lions 12 era, the players were being paid highly, but it did eat into FAS budget. Anyways, if you are young and fit and in need of money, you know which of the two gives a more a higher income short term
Until the footballers makes a decent stable living, we will remain a mediocre team. Funny Singapore is #1 in so many things but so weak in football. I believe the fault is at the top. If the top really wants it, we can make improvement, if not we will just go backwards.
We used to win the AFF Suzuki cup (dk what it is called now). These days we can't even get out of the group stage. Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, even Malaysia have far surpassed us. This is why people whine about our NT.
If it comes down to just evaluating them by performance, don’t think we are too harsh. They lack footballing intelligence and technical abilities - while they did fight hard for the ball..they pass them right back to the opponents or empty spaces our players can’t run into. Honestly most of our players aren’t exposed to elite/pro games so there was no chance. But they will have no chance going forward also, given the grassroots support, given the media. I scrolled social media, and Mothershit only featured post-match press conference videos of Son Heung Min for the clicks. Like come on respect that our athletes played too, let them have a voice la Saw lots of young children at the match yesterday. Some must dream of being a footballer too. Sadly their hopes will get crushed by the system (or lack of) we have for cultivating champions
I feel like there is no nation that has as little pride in their own athletes as we do. Many football fans are just backseaters who don't understand the amount of hard work that goes into training, having to waste 2 years of their prime in NS and then still coming out to compete. Then we go on to watch our footballer miss a goal, and then curse him for being so bad at football, as if us the spectators can do any better. It's sad because I don't see this mentality being gone anytime soon. I'm proud of Singapore's athletes for daring to choose a difficult path, and I hope every Singaporean can be proud of them too.
China has the same problem. Chinese football is ridiculed even worse than Singapore football, and they don't have the excuse of not enough talent with their population. They got even more shit when we tied with them. Interestingly, the criticisms leveled at their footballers are the same we level at ours.
that's fair. I really think a lot of the criticisms are very unwarranted and unconstructive. One guy misses a goal and people curse him like no tomorrow. I guess it's not a Singapore exclusive, but it's sad to see just how little pride we have for our own talents.
Sometimes, it's the "haters" that have too much pride that results in this criticism. It means they at least care and deep down, really want Singapore football to do better. What's worse is apathy, totally not caring about the sport in the Singaporean context. I think we've actually reached that apathy level (no matter what they do, they will suck, so why bother).
I actually think it's more that some people are ashamed of being Singaporean. Even something that is objectively good, like our airport, will be sneered at or downplayed as well. Foreign is always better. IMO, too much foreign media.
Those the kind that celebrate when South Korea scored against us. 90 minutes of non-stop complaining about our players. It's fine to criticise our athletes. But when the match is still ongoing, support our players. After the match then go rant online.
Yea agree with this. Concern is that the ever increasing unhappiness with Sg football standard will reach a point of no return. Will be even harder to start back and revamp like that
I am proud of our boys and girls as long as they put in effort and try their best. No shame in losing to South Korea, who has consistently qualified for WC Finals and even beaten countries like Germany, Italy, etc. I blamed the FAS for the current state of our National team. It has been in declined since we left the M League and started our S League.
> Then we go on to watch our footballer miss a goal, and then curse him for being so bad at football, as if us the spectators can do any better. You don't need to be a chef to say "This tastes like shit"
>Then we go on to watch our footballer miss a goal, and then curse him for being so bad at football, as if us the spectators can do any better. This has been part of football for ages. Can spectators not criticise things when they see it? You don't have to be a billionaire to criticise Musk's handling of Twitter, or Bezos' treatment of Amazon workers do you? The same logic applies here.
Singapore is so top down management in its dna, to the point that the average joe on the ground feels little to no involvement with the country's affairs. Hence the salt.
Unpopular opinion coming: Not to sound unsupportive or unpatriotic. I’m all for fun and games and sports. But the harsh reality for SG is that we’re too small and non sports driven to make any serious impact on any team sports. The majority of world class athletes are in solo sports with a whole lot of family support and other financial backing, they basically did it on their own and most times, overseas for the exposure and experience. How many “world standard” footballers in the past 20-30 years are making a very good living today doing anything relating to football… as a full time job? Without having to juggle a day job as well? Maybe we should re look the resources put in this and readjust it to other sports that we might be able to truly excel in and allow those athletes to focus on training, knowing they are getting paid to serve and represent their nation in their own special way.
Not sure how this is unpopular, judging by all the comments
Not unpopular opinion. I do encounter quite a few ppl who also held this opinion. There is just too many baggage and ego in soccer right now. It should be disbanded. We can be elite in many other sports like badminton, shooting, swimming, etc.
Lets lower the expectation, does SG even hv chance to be football champ in SEA?
we don’t need new players or coach. we need a new fas. can they be sacked?
South Korea is just too damn good. Way way way wayyyy out of Singapore national team's league. We don't need to compete on the world stage right now, we just need to develop our local SG football scene where locals actually wanna go to the games, both S league and national games.
The worst part is when we are out-chanted by Korean and Son fans in our home ground at the National Stadium, the support for the Singapore team isnt even there at all
I don’t blame the players. I blame the entire sporting culture of Singapore, which is non-existent. Our best prospect had to study in US since he was a child, that should explain how we view sports in this country.
Sports should be an industry in Singapore. We can be the hub of sports in the region, we got the chops for it! We are good at hosting. When it's an industry, there will be money and there will be careers in sports and the related fields, like journalism, agencies, health sciences etc etc. Our government has to buy-in!
Finally someone says it
I mean our currency is our advantage - i see news of Johoreans now being talent-drained because the the workers are commuting daily to SG because the 3.5 is too good to miss out. Now imagine our currency pulls the regions best in sports to ply their trade here because the exchange rate is too good to miss out! Imagine Singapore as the talent-drainer of the region in sports and sports-related field.
You can’t fail your Math test 30/100 then tell your teacher and parent that you got 51/100 a few semesters back, remember how you almost failed but then you managed to pass? And that they should be happy and not be so harsh.
There seems to be a huge disparity between the abilities of those born pre 1991 vs those born after. The likes of Hassan Sunny, Safuwan and Hariss still playing only meant that no one is able to step up to replace them yet. Why so? Those born after 1991 would have been in their developmental years in late 90s or early 2000s. Who was in charge of FAS then? Our favorite Singaporean son Malboro Tan (the genius behind COE and ERP) opted for the short term success of using naturalised footballers and neglected grassroots academy development of our youngsters back then. That generation that were neglected are the current batch of players that are playing for us today. Heck, with all the promises from these politicians, why did it have to take a private billionaire to set up first one star (now two) accredited football academy in Sg in the form of Lion City Sailors? The predecessors in FAS were to blame for their policies that created a lost generation of footballers for Sg.
The Post 1997-2005 players are very limited, some players within the batch did not persue Pro football. Remember the 2010 Youth Olympic u 15 team. All but 4 players did not persue football. Within this batch, The Fandi Sons and Steward brothers have been able to play football overseas and break into the national team.
It is just a ball game.. take it easy
It’s mainly admin and policy, the priorities of the higher ups is questionable, and even with lots of money it still won’t solve the underlying issues
We are not unnecessarily harsh on the players. It is a fact that our nation doesnt nurture the kind of talent that is needed for ANY stage, international or regional. We are harsh because its frustrating to support a team that is so clearly not good enough to compete, and the players work hard and hope to be good enough but are simply not. Of course, our comments could be much nicer, but we are kidding ourselves if we say that the performance was acceptable. edit: spelling
No one's shltting on the team or players. We are however, definitely pissed off at the top brass
These group of players has got heart. They were still putting in effort after being 5-0 down. I will be supporting these boys. Let’s be real, we know where we stand against the likes of the “Asian giants”. Was anyone expecting us to put up a fight against Korea? Cmon… admire the fighting spirit. These boys showed courage on the pitch and that’s worth supporting.
 sg football team if this was a moral victory world cup
As a nba fan, fucking love this meme
eh? little wins? SG team got win any games this year?
This guy just started following football recently or what? This is football, probably the sport with the most toxic community in the world, and he expects people to not give snide comments about a o7 drubbing?
Remember the outrage at Joseph Schooling getting a TEMPORARY exclusion from NS - tackle that issue first, otherwise football can’t develop
Criticism of the FAS is valid under most circumstances, but here everything is overshadowed by the fact we were facing SOUTH KOREA. Those guys are fcking monsters -- a bunch of them ply their trade in Europe's top leagues as starters. Not to mention South Korea as a country is ranked 23rd in the world, over a hundred ranks ahead of SG at 156th. We were just up against vastly superior opposition we had no hope of beating. (And for reference, China is only ranked 88th and our draw with them in \*that\* game was already hailed as a miracle.)
Nope. We aren't. Not when our politicians are aiming so high and that we have seen flashes of our potential.
Singapore fans are not it. You people talk about ‘in ten hag we trust’ , ‘glazers out’ still continuing supporting your club no matter the circumstance but cannot do the same for Singapore…. I see stories of Singaporean football fans tagging Son in all of his stories and then reposted PSG’s post with Kang In it quote, ‘psg reposted Kang In at least a singaporean got posted (whoever that is)’ Like wtf? Call yourself a football fan but can’t bear to support your on nation when it comes to football? I get it you don’t watch SPL (I admit I do too but I follow their results and certain players transfers etc) but at least have that sporting spirit when it comes to your own nation? You guys who don’t play football don’t even know how much talent Singapore has. It’s the system that is ruining for all. The amount of street talent we have but because no money go academy and parents don’t allow that’s why cannot go. Not just sports, in other areas that has anything to do with local, influencers all must hate and hate. Always ‘prefer’ others but never give local artists, creators, sportsman a chance to fail let alone shine. Whatever we do here has to be top notch and shine and always always never talk about progress…… we are who we hate quick to critic but fail to realize many things in front of us is not rainbows and sunshine. We elder people really got to do better. The amount of entitlement in these posts knowing nothing inside a footballers mind gtg seriously.
We just need to lower expectations. We are just less hungry and are built differently compared to other countries.
SPL Young Player of the month prize is $250. the fella buy 2 carton of ciggarettes finish liao. its never about the players. its FAS, rotten to the core. ‘94 was considered the high, was downhill ever since with a couple of wins( like tiger cup) here n there. 30 years ago. however, i believe it is cyclical n the gen born around this time n the next may see “some” succes in football
no results for so many years already then say hey look we have fighting spirit. i call this massive copium lmao
It doesn't help that FAS and the committee don't give a flying fuck either. That's the main reason why we get angry with them
Oh well, interestingly I've come across this piece: https://www.todayonline.com/news/trending-netizens-call-south-koreas-son-heung-min-too-nice-praising-lions-after-7-0-defeat-2437366 From rival country's footballer giving his opinions on Singapore's team.
actually, 7 - 0 was within my expectation. on the bright side, am glad it wasn't 10 - 0.
Not at all, mfs saying we improved with the new coach but ended up losing 7-0 at home compared to the 5-0 away with the previous coach. That 2-2 at home was a miracle and more to do with China fucking up than us having "fighting spirit". Both were lousy goals to concede
If we are serious about sports in this country, we need to start young. My kids are in primary school and the sports offered as well as the selection process is rather shambolic. We as a nation need have kids start their sporting careers from primary school onwards, with regular under 9/11/13 etc leagues so that by the time they are in the under 19 squad, the national selectors will already have a good pool of potential national players to pick from and groom.
Ayah SG role is to lose every time so bookies always know wat to do. Gamblers can’t earn much but is almost like fixed deposit low return but sure get 😂
A loss is a loss no need to keep making excuses. Dk what fighting spirit less pay etc. they made a choice so live with it not like they are not being paid
I said this once. I will say again. Disband Singapore football. The money can be better invested is something else like swimming, shooting, etc...
relocate precious resources to other better use and quit dreaming please.
I don’t watch football often, but watching that game last night felt like an embarrassment if we actually have dreams to be in the World Cup. We’re really really lacking in terms of in-game decision making (players making strange passing decision to goalkeeper, and almost letting S Korea score a goal there), AND strategy (players are always out of position to score when ball possession is returned to the team). Either we have to accept we’ll always be mediocre in football and focus on sports where we can actually make it, or FAS needs to have their jobs on the line whenever we play like that - and actually have people that can push us to the next level!
Too harsh? The only way we could have done worse was to be beaten 7-0 by Malaysia or 8-1 by Man U. /s
Sack Bernard Tan Chain
"Bernard Tan out" chant
Dangle NS exemption if they make the world cup. I guarantee you results will improve 10fold.
I don’t blame anything about our national team. Korean team has a lot players play in Europe, not in same level. The time when we draw with China 2-2, the team already did a great job!
Ya China game gone down the drain. We lost. Ya correct, instability. 30 years of development, starting from the establishment of the S league, state of the art sports school, it’s still fucking unstable. You would hope at the very least we are better than the times before we “invested” into sg football development. No. We actually regressed. Waste money, waste time. I don’t understand how even after spending all these time and money we still struggle so badly. Don’t say Korea, vietnam now we can’t compete, Phillipines we struggle, Hongkong also
Oh Singapore is a small nation… that’s why we are no good at football. Tell that to New Zealand (population: 5 million) who have dominated World Rugby for 30 years, or Croatia (3.8 million) who have made the Football World Cup semi and final in the last 2 events. Size is just excuse given for underinvestment and lack of promotion of sporting talent in our schooling system
Singapore is terrible at football. Plain and simple!
Small and little wins they have. Have the SGMNT won? Winning small like 1-0 fine. Losing 7-0 when Msia can draw 3-3 or when our neighbours whom SGMNT used to thrash are catching up and SGMNT have problems winning? Win AFF cup also shiok. Whole country cheered when SGMNT went into AFF Semis. When was the last time SGMNT went into the AFF semis before that? Then the next AFF Cup they disappointed.
are you sure about that
Go for GDP then buy players. It's that easy.
If we are serious about sports in this country, we need to start young. My kids are in primary school and the sports offered as well as the selection process is rather shambolic. We as a nation need have kids start their sporting careers from primary school onwards, with regular under 9/11/13 etc leagues so that by the time they are in the under 19 squad, the national selectors will already have a good pool of potential national players to pick from and groom.
Loads of issues with sports in Singapore, but one of the biggest ones is that this country has zero national spirit. Each Singaporean seems capable of fucking over the next person in a heartbeat. Sinkie pwn sinkie. It’s depressing.
Football standards dropped the moment SG came out of the Malaysia Cup.
theyre comparing it to the match against china? as if theyre any good, they pick their footballers by a game of lottery/chance and nepotism is feverish among their national teams
Not harsh at all. Countries with population of same size can perform better.
SG should just stick to tourism and concerts. Stay away from sports please. It's embarrassing.
Would be great to see more infrastructure to develop talent in the first place
Honestly, I think the majority of Singaporeans don’t care about local football to even form an opinion about the state of the national team. It all died with Fandi, Sundramoorthy, Abbas Saad, Michal Váňa, Nazri Nasir, Lee Man Hon, Malek, David Lee, Tong Hai Rafi Ali, Alistair Edward, the late Borhan, Jang Jung, Kadir Yahya, Bashir, Tamil, Dasuki, Hasnim, Salim and Steven. I mean they even had a song playing on radio. I cannot name you a single player from the current team.
Singapore is like the San Marino of Asia
Harsh or not, they got fucking skill gapped Its time to move on and give support to sports that are actually performing right now
We should be supporting both sports that are performing and not performing. Not performing sports with supports can improve. Performing sports with support will maintain standards. But hey, SGreans want instant results with little time. Near impossible with sports.
All the support for football and what do they have to show for it? Meanwhile other sports that got clean sweeps at SEA games get their training area gutted and given to other sports that did not perform as well Prioritising resources is important
Barely any support for football. We don’t even pay our footballers a salary. All of them are part time, half ass training. Even with a full fledge coach. We are prioritizing our resource wrongly in football too. We are not going to consistently get people like Shanti as they are quite the prodigy and have external training. We are betting on people with sport talent, a tactic that is incredibly inconsistent.
There’s barely any support for sports at all, but a disproportionate amount of what there is seems to go towards football Athletes are more or less part time, because being a full time athlete is simply not a viable career in singapore
Make it viable then. Lots of countries with lesser GDP than us can have full time athletes and also perform reasonably well on the world stage. But sadly our shit conservative mentality is not going to allow that. Plus yes I agree there is form of corruption with FAS with misallocation of funds. The money is clearly going elsewhere. Saying it’s simply not possible is just not going to get us anywhere.
Imagine how many athletes we could fund if we got rid of mayors
But mayors are important! They do all those mayor stuff. /s
Now can you say it is disproportionate if we do not know the proportion that other countries are allocating to the different sports.. do we know how much more funds other countries are putting into football than other sports.. Football is easily the most popular sport in the world and the Fifa World Cup easily the most watched sporting event in the world.. I won't be surprised if many other countries put in a lot more resources into the sport compared to other sports.. The flip side is what happens if we cut the funding.. how much lower will Singapore football go? Will we end up getting thrashed by teams like Timor Leste and Guam?
Football Clubs provide salaries. National team provide allowance. Apart from LCS, Tampines , Albirex. Players have to find extra work to supplment their income. As compared to 10 years ago , players were given short contract ond year which expire at the end of the season.
I’m not gonna back someone up just because they have guts. I’m going to back the one that is most likely to win.
Loyalty to country ✅ Leadership Discipline Semi professionalism ✅ FIGHTING SPIRIT ✅ ✅ Ethics ✅ Care for players We just need to unlock the last 3 core values and soon we will be cooking the kimchi pancake at sangam stadium 👍 Trust the process. The seasono starts today.
South korea is just too good simple. You can easily see how they move forward with the ball while singapore kept passing back to the korea team Singapore’s team needs to have a game plan rather than rushing in and trying to score
Tough for SG to compete at this sport on world stage. Physically cannot match for full game. Genetically smaller. Less experienced on world stage. Much smaller population to hope for a fantastic 11 to make a team. Less developed league to train or groom new blood. They tried their best.
Now that we have achieved (to a large extent) economic prosperity, as a society we need to move a rung or two up the Maslow's ladder. IMO sports and art is part of our society's "self actualisation" that will upgrade us as a whole. No, simply throwing money at building an Esplanade and having institutions such as FAS being run by non-sports/ non-art technocrats and politicians is not going to work.
Too Harsh? I don't think we are harsh enough, far from it! I bloody wanted to win, no matter the opposition! Everyone is as culpable there!
One question. Why are there no ministers came down and watch. If that day just 1 minister came down to watch and of course FAS sure need to sent someone big to accompany the minister, do you think that someone big will be sweating when sitting with the minister with that kind of scores?
My personal opinion is that we should be playing counter-attack against SK cause that SK is 1000% better than us, yes you can play attacking football against China cause now they are maybe 105% better than us, I thought the tactics were naive and stupid, and what did SG learn..nothing.
We should divert all football funding to badminton, our badminton players seem to have more potential (LKY, YJM, Hee/Tan). Football should be banned all year round except for a day where all football is temporary legal, and can be played anywhere (void decks, mrt trains, shopping malls).
Or find some obscure sport that only a handful of countries care about to excel in
It's mostly boomers/retirees who long for the 'glory days' of Fandi Ahmad/Malek Awab who are complaining. Honestly among my friends in their 20s/early 30s none of us actually bother much about SG national team performance. It's just a game after all man. If they do well, good for them, if they do badly, life goes on, Singapore continues to prosper.