Singapore National Football Team Saga: Straits Times article VS Avramovic’s subsequent clarification
March 12th, 2010 | 
Author: Over the years, the Straits Times is not known to cover the S-League and the Lions extensively. Since the Malaysia Cup days, it is fair to say that our national paper had taken a scant interest at trying to sell local football to the public.
Some will argue that ST does provide match reports on selected S-League matches. When our national team plays away games, they do send journalists miles away to provide stories from the ground. However, on any given day, news articles on foreign football leagues outnumber those on local football by ten to one (at least).
Thus, it is with some interest when ST ran a report with the headline “No Wonder Lions Lost” on 10 Mar.[1]
In the report, journalist Wang Meng Meng lists ill-discipline and poor attitude of the players among the reasons why we lost 2-1 to Jordan in the final Asian Cup qualification group. Wang’s article contained several quotes from team coach Raddy Avramovic.
A day later, Avramovic found it necessary to call for a press conference to clarify comments and misconceptions in media report.[2] Clearly, Wang’s article on ST is the “media report” in question, as no other source contained original research on this allegation.
Avramovic’s statement to the media is firm, succinct and concise. The Sports editorial team had taken the liberty to summarise the stark differences between Wang’s news report and Avramovic’s rebuttal (they are quoted directly off both reports as referenced above):
| As reported by Wang Meng Meng on ST [1] | Avramovic’s clarification [2] |
| … two players oversleep and were late boarding the team bus | Avramovic confirmed that two players were seven minutes late boarding the team bus on match day. |
| … a couple of players were smoking in the dressing room (at half-time) | Avramovic commented, “In all my time as a coach, I have never seen any player openly smoke in front of me, especially inside the dressing room. On that day, none of us saw any player smoke at any time in the dressing room.” |
| Said Avramovic: “Certain players have become too big for their boots. They come with an attitude that their place in the national team is reserved for them. During the match, some players gave just 50 per cent effort.” | (quoted from Avramovic) “I was disappointed with our performance and the result on the day itself but I cannot fault the players’ attitude and commitment in training.” |
| Avramovic yesterday also lashed out at the poor attitude of some players during training sessions | (quoted from Avramovic) “The team conducted themselves well in difficult conditions with the weather and unprofessional treatment from the hosts and I was generally very happy. Nobody was late for any of the training sessions or team meetings.” |
| Said Avramovic:” Some players complained the training sessions were too tough. They forgot that it was hard work that got them into the national team in the first place.” |
The only thing the article got right was the fact there there were two players who were late for the team bus. However, they were just seven minutes late, according to Avramovic.
It does not take any more analysis to see how different Avramovic’s words to the media are to what ST had reported. It has to make you wonder if the words quoted by Wang Meng Meng are accurate in the first place.
This leads to several more questions:
- What is ST’s source of information? From what Avramovic told the media, it does not appear that ST’s information was reliable at all to start with
- If ST’s source of information has not been verified, what is the purpose of Wang’s article? It appears to be a blow to the morale of our national team at a time where they are still reeling from a disappointing defeat.
Even without Avramovic’s clarification, it is already clear that Wang had attributed the loss in Jordan (by a ONE-goal margin) entirely to unprofessional behaviour by our Lions. He had clearly ignored that fact that Jordan is a reputed Middle Eastern football side and the weather conditions in Amman were entirely different from that in Singapore. Oh, the Jordanians had a partisan 27,000 crowd behind them as well.
This editorial team will take this opportunity to reiterate our support for the Lions in this article and encourage the fans to get behind our national team by ignoring news reports which try to sway the crowd otherwise.
[1] http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Sport/Story/STIStory_500226.html
[2] http://www.fas.org.sg/default.asp?V_DOC_ID=3494
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(1) 1 minister (that we know of) was sleeping during parliament. The defense minister some more.
(2) The ministers are throwing a smokescreen at us all the time, with one of them coming up with a fable of the kingdom of frogs so that he can tell us that he doesn’t listen to criticisms.
(3) Certain ministers have become too big for their boots, and they even want to award themselves and 8.8% pay raise. They come with an attitude that their place in parliament is reserved for them, and some don’t even to have contest for elections. Some MPs hold so many directorships that they are not present in the parliament sittings.
(4) Some of the MPs are lazy and too old, and should be replaced by younger opposition MPs.
(5) The prime minister complains that he cannot solve this weeks challenges and will forget about next week’s challenges if there were 10- 20 opposition members in parliament.
Please… It wasn’t even expected that Singapore would be one goal away from qualification from the Asian in the final match of the group stage. Of course, if you are so close from doing something so monumental, you will be disappointed and emotional. If I were the coach, I would also be pissed that the national paper is coming out to damage the morale of the soccer team in this way.
Great job TR/ Damon Yeo on the article. I hope that with your support, Singapore soccer grows stronger!
The ST took the easiest and most attention grabbing route. Cos to them there’s no other way to pique the interest of the public.
According to the official FAS pre-match reports, the Jordanians had some dirty illegal tricks up their sleeves as well. The Lions were denied proper training facilities and were quite badly short changed : http://www.fas.org.sg/default.asp?V_DOC_ID=3486
To me, this article is the embodiment of what an alternative media source should be. Driving home very strong arguments, while keeping objectivity in check.
There are a lot of “what-could-have-been”s leading up to the original article from ST, so, rather than putting my focus on a “magic bullet” (or the Single Bullet Theory, if you are familiar) , I went ahead and looked at the arguments here, and the links provided at the end of the article.
What I found from ST was a sweeping header that went “No Wonder Lions lost” – such statements remind me of “coffeeshop talk”.
Good work, Damon and the editorial team. We’re not afraid to see the dark side of the moon, show us the way there!
The Avramovic must be right, how else could he have dare challenged the monkeys in SPH? He would risk getting sued! If the ah Meng kia dont issue a clarification to Avramovic’s comments, then we all know who is the ‘ah meng’ lor.
I was involved in the FAS 4-5 years ago, and i think ST is likely to be correct in this issue.
@The Sims – I’m involved in the FAS NOW and I think the ST is likely to be wrong. They’re just trying to sell a story and start a frenzy.
i don’t agree with this article, obviously Raddy can’t say that ST is right, else players will be more demoralised if they hear their coach lecture them in the media. washing dirty linen in open is not raddy’s way.
remember Lim biow chuan’s case, he said he was misquoted.
raddy would have spoken the same.
anyway,today’s ST interviewed goh Tat chuan who shed light that indiscipline has been going on for a long time but no-one took charge.
The old days of role models like Fandi who can discipline younger players are over for the Lions.
i guess end of the day, facts will be facts. The more important take away from this is that if the ST article was written with the intention of skewing the facts to try to grab attention, then we can jolly well do without as local media should be more supportive of local football. If the intention is to shame those players involved and eradicate the ills in local football and improve the standards, then well done to the reporter. Either way, i think it’s good to have an alternate voice here so that we can always do a rain check to make sure that the reporting is done properly!
@cy – if you watched the match, you’d realise the alleged ‘team indiscipline’ isn’t the reason why the Lions lost. Jordan are no pushovers and if i’m not wrong they were quarterfinalists at the second last Asian Cup. And if you read the link I posted above on the pre-match issues you’d realise there were other factors too. For ST to narrow it down to just the indiscipline is very narrow sighted.
@Bhas
thanks for echoing my views.
I think at the end of the day, what I was trying to say is that there is a stark difference between what ST reported and what Avramovic said afterwards. Either one is not truthful.
Avramovic never said he was misquoted. He only said he was clarifying some comments. That is very telling. Notice that all the newspapers never said that he DENIED making the comments.
Also, even TODAY astutely noted that while Avramovic said he has never seen any player smoke in front of him, it doesn’t mean that they don’t smoke out of his sight.
This article by TR is seriously poor. So much for being praised for objectivity.
hi sahb. i don’t know who you are but please don’t use my name in reverse to make your point. thanks.
I have been reading about soccer especially in Singapore since 1974.
Things have not changed in the reporting but reporters have changed.
They are still singing the same tunes.
The reporting was and is always very biased. The press has got so much freedom that is unbelievable.
Instead of rallying our multi-cultural society to support the team the press took and still taking cheap shots.
Instead of motivating the team they were and are ever ready to criticise.
So what is new ?