TR EMERITUS

[email protected] The Football Association of Singapore (FAS) has recently launched their Strategic Plan for 2010-2015, setting key goals and identifying strategic areas for improvement. The overall target is to propel our national football team to be the top ten in Asia by 2015. Implications On the surface, this renewed target is a much toned down version of the Goal 2010 plan, which was laid down in 1998 with the target to take Singapore to the World Cup by this year. The media has often judged Goal 2010 as an utter embarrassment to FAS and perhaps the Singapore government, so it is perhaps imperative for FAS to set more reasonable targets this time round. With a target of just being the top ten in Asia, it means that our national team would not be expected to qualify for the 2014 World Cup, or perhaps the 2018 edition as well. After all, unless there is an overhaul in FIFA’s allocation to World Cup slots, only five to six Asian teams will go to the next two FIFA World Cups at best. Also, this target indicates that qualification to the 2015 Asian Cup will be necessary to make the target a successful one. The Lions have already missed out on the 2011 Asian Cup, so with up to 16 slots in 2015 available for grabs, the Lions will be expected to qualify to be able to call themselves “top ten in Asia”. The Route There Football, like any sports, is all about relative performances. With interest, investment and time, most football teams will get better. To leapfrog other teams in Asia, Singapore will need to outperform them, moving forward at an even faster pace. According to the latest FIFA world rankings, Singapore is ranked 127th in the world and 20th in Asia. In terms of ASEAN teams, we are ranked third, behind Thailand and Vietnam. The Vietnamese are also the defending champions in the ASEAN Football Championships (Tiger Cup), so it is somewhat misleading on FAS’ part when one of their key goals is to “…… and maintain our position as the top ASEAN team”. In a nutshell, to be in the top ten, Singapore will have to surge ahead of ten other Asian nations and reach the world ranking of around 94. Using the latest FIFA data, the ten teams between Singapore and that tenth Asian slot are, in ascending order, Vietnam, Yemen, Korea DPR (North), Thailand, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Jordan, Qatar, Syria, Oman and Uzbekistan. It will be reasonable to expect that Singapore will be able to overhaul both Vietnam and Thailand in the coming years. Our chance will arrive come the end of this year, when we will compete in the 2010 ASEAN football championships. We had won this competition three times before and will need to show that we have the capability to do it again. UAE, Qatar and Oman are rich-oil nations with football-mad population. They are expected to pour much more money into football development in the coming years. Their domestic clubs are known to use their huge financial resources to draw top European players and will continue to do so. That can only improve the standard of their football. Qatar, in particular, has an open policy to naturalise foreign born players. Recently, a Senegalese, a Uruguayan and a Brazilian had donned their national colours and they are likely to pursue this avenue to improve their national team. North Korea is perhaps in the different class from all other teams in this spectrum. They are going to play in the 2010 World Cup and their ranking will improve dramatically. Their currently position outside of the top ten in Asia is more likely to be due to the fact that they do not play friendlies against top nations because of political reasons. And the current tenth team in Asia is Uzbekistan. In June 2008, they came to Singapore and destroyed the Lions 7-3 at the National Stadium, despite playing under very unfamiliar conditions. Their national team have players currently plying their trade in top leagues in Russia, Ukraine and the Czech Republic. Oh, also, ex-FIFA World Player of the Year Rivaldo is currently playing in the Uzbekistani domestic league and is being coached by ex-World Cup winning coach Luiz Scolari. This gives a good indication of the level of investment that is being made in football there. Goal Alignment The challenges to reach top ten in Asia are clear and evident. However, that is not to say that it is just a pipedream. On the other hand, there is very little to suggest that the “strategic areas” identified will bring us there. There will be a focus on FAS to improve football science and medicine and to leverage on the use of IT. It must be true that a lot of the teams above us in Asia have already been doing that for the past decade. There is also talk of re-establishing friendly tournaments and invite top nations around the globe to play the Lions. However, friendly tournaments are often nothing more than exhibition matches and there is nothing FAS can do to ensure that visiting teams actually play competitively against our national team. Analysis Our editorial team has identified two major areas where we can improve and perhaps give us a fighting chance to reach top ten in Asia. Firstly, there should be a structured program in FAS to help our budding talents move overseas to play competitive football at a very young age. Our Indonesian-based players, namely Noh Alam Shah and Ridhuan Muhammad, are excelling in the Indonesian League and their success in a short span of time showed that our local boys can compete at a higher level.  FAS can grant scholarships to young players who had excelled at various age groups and send them to top academies around Asia or even Europe. Not every one of them will make it professionally, but a couple of years of experience in a world class academy can do no harm to the players. Secondly, the funding into the S-League needs to be increased significantly. At the present, only a handful of clubs locally have the resources, reputation and ability to recruit top foreign players. The quality of foreign players can be a crowd-drawer and will be essential to a young league like our own. As noted in a previous article, there should be a reduction of 100% foreign teams in the S-League, a renewed effort to reinstate local teams and provide them with the relevant funding to compete at the initial stages. There is also a clear lack of corporate support in the S-League. Globally famous local companies like SingTel, DBS and Creative are not known to pump financial resources into the S-League over the years. If only a company like SingTel can purchase a local team and provide them with proper funding. Such corporate-football business models formed the foundation block of domestic leagues in Japan and Korea back in the 1990s. Do you agree with our analysis? As always, we will like to hear from you. Related reads: Singapore National Football Team: Let’s talk about statistics Heartbreak for Lions S-League Insight: FAS fails to learn from past mistakes  Read More →

The Star, 10 April 2010 FILMMAKER Jack Neo has been spotted with his wife in Taiwan in what appears to be a trip to patch up his marriage. Neo, who has been nicknamed 'Singapore's Tiger Woods' by the media after reports about his alleged links to 11 women, was photographed holding his wife Irene Kng close to him while walking on a street in Taiwan. Sin Chew Daily reported that Neo had travelled to the island for a discussion with a Taiwan-based Malaysian actor. It is believed that Neo is planning to make a Taiwanese version of I Not Stupid, his 2002 hit movie. Kng, who broke down during a press conference last month when Neo apologised over his indiscretions, also reportedly went to a night market in Taiwan with her husband. Neo apparently kept using his mobile phone to take pictures of his wife. They were also seen sharing a bowl of noodles at the night market, besides seeking shelter under an umbrella while walking in the rain, the daily said. -- THE STAR/ANN  Read More →

Written by Our Correspondent In an article on its frontpage today titled "Romania 'wants to see justice done", Straits Times journalist Teh Joo Lin wrote: The capital of Romania is Bucharest and not Budapest which is the capital of Hungary. The regrettable error has since been rectified in the online version of the Straits Times, but not the printed papers which are read by millions of readers. Did MFA give the journalist the wrong information or did he get the capitals mixed up himself? Either way, the juvenile mistake reflects badly on the professionalism and credibility of the Straits Times which appears to be completely clueless about basic geography. Shouldn't the editor go through the article thoroughly first before it going to print? What will the Romanians think of Singapore if this error is highlighted back in Romania? Both MFA and Straits Times should step forward and clarify who is responsible for the mistake. It will be a disaster if MFA officials do not even know the difference between Budapest and Bucharest.   EDITORS’ NOTE: Please join our Facebook page here and invite your friends to do so to create awareness of the current affairs affecting Singaporeans.  Read More →