We are trying to search a lost formula which is buried for good.

Football is about support. Whether is the old kampong sentiment for M-League or the yet-to-be-seen progress of the modern National team, there will not be any football if there is no support.

Going back is a step back.

i am a singaporean born turkish now living in turkey. i used 2 live in singapore till i was 12. i always watched a mix of turkish football and singapore football. what i realised about the teams were about the fan support and amount of motivation they had. turkish players were always motivated and did well for most matches. fans also did their part. cheered for the whole match without stopping. even though their team was losing, they continued not to give up hope. when i watch singapore teams, the fans seem to just cheer same thing and drum all the way. turkish football fans are just one of a kind. they have their kick off starting cheer and cheer different chants till the match end. they also celebrate on their way home by horning their cars and waving the turkish flag. i dont see that in signapore and the players in the team are not so motivated and disciplined. i hope the coach can do something about motivating the players and disclipline them

“I dont think we should go back to the M-League or join any other leagues as a team.”

If you are trying to rationalize that the present format is better (for the fans) than M-League, then you have failed.

I wonder whether by going back to M-League now, we are able to bring back the kind of good-old-days ‘fanatical’ support & pure spirit. The fact is that the momentum (M-League craze) has already broken off. Do you know the fun (sense of good expectation in our young hearts) of even walking through PA all the way to Kallang Stadium, let alone watching the match itself.

I have been living with a stadium barely three minutes walk from my place for more than 15 years and I only attended one paid match (S-League) so far and that was many many years ago.

Why not you just do a quick survey on those who had experienced the Quah Kim Song, Sundramoorthy, Edward Alistair, Abba Said era and I bet you will know the answer even before the survey.

Regional achievement or not, it is the sustained support (the spirit of rivalry & national fervour against malaysian states) that the old format was able to achieve that the current format just cannot mirror.

1) I think that FT is not an issue. France has many players not born in France, Bahrain (as mentioned in earlier comments) has a few Nigerian-born players in their ranks. So where you draw the line of being local or not?

2) My point of the article, is to prove that we had indeed made progress in the last ten years. I agree that our next step is to compete with the Asian giants, but we are moving in the right direction. Success in international football DOES NOT come overnight. Spain, with all its infrastructure and fanatism in football only tasted their first success in 2008.

3) I dont think we should go back to the M-League or join any other leagues as a team. S-League provides livelihood to many local players and this is something we must continue to have. We have a population of 5m, countries of similar size like Finalnd / Denmark / Slovakia / Norway all have a proper professional leagues running and they do not simply “join another league”. The goal of S-League should be to develop local players and yes, help them move overseas if opportunities arises.

Having a small nation is one thing but having people in the country playing football is another. In some other countries, there can be alot of people choosing football as a career cos of the prospects but many people dun see prospects in Singapore. No offence to any race but that is one reason why we dun see alot of Chinese taking up football professionally, esp when they form the major bulk of the population here.

Back then, I still remember we had the MILO soccer school. Under Jita Singh we were drilled with the basics of soccer playing and skills (eg. dribbling, passing, man-marking)

On top of that, we were encouraged to take on boys older and more experienced than us.

FAS should stop importing FTs and start spending our taxpayers money on training our young boys with the basics of soccer skills. And send them overseas like Korea, Japan and Australia. For them to see and experience the different styles of soccer playing.

As Singapore is too small for the S-league, we should be humble enough to rejoin the M-League or even join the Liga Indonesia. This would enable our boys to grow claws and fangs and not be over-awed by huge crowds and larger than life teams.

I don’t mind if we don’t win any trophies. All is ask is good passionate soccer playing from our boys. At least, if we lose….we lost to a better team (or due to referee kayu, hehehe); not because of the insipid play that we have been tortured to see for so long.

i agree that we should be looking to follow the examples of NZ, Bahrain, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Costa Rica into seeing what is required to take us to the World Cup given our demographics. Following our competitors in the region will not take us anywhere. I guess this report is not meant to suggest that we should be resting on our laurels, but to say that rather than constantly lambasting the national team, we should be showing some support since we did not fare that badly after all.

@AIR FORCE KING
i do think that raddy is playing the best 11 on the field. Players like noh alam shah and hariss harun have their place in the starting 11 because they warrant it. If u look at the substitutes that we have, not a lot of them have played well enough to suggest that they can take over the place of anyone in the first 11 at the moment. Ridhuan and Noh Rahman constantly get outmuscled by stronger opponents when they play defence.