Were the Lions a better team when there wasn’t an S-League? An observer of local sports seems to think so

The Letter:

This letter appeared in today’s edition of The Straits Times:

Frankly, national teams bred on Malaysia Cup were the real deal

I DISAGREE with Mr Liew Eng Leng (‘Frankly, S-League football bred better players for international glory’; last Saturday). Although Singapore did not win any reputable international titles before the S-League kicked off in 1996, the national teams bred on Malaysia Cup football lifted the country to

Asia’s elite rankings on four major occasions, with sterling performances in the 1966 Asian Games (top four), 1977 World Cup qualifiers (Asian top eight and first in South-east Asia), 1980 Olympic Games qualifiers (Asian top six) and 1984 Asian Cup finals (top seven).

The national teams of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s clearly possessed a lethal bite despite facing bigger and more ferocious foes, whereas those bred on S-League football are often left biting the dust when the going gets tough.

Although the modern-era Lions were among the top 15 performers in Asia’s 20-team World Cup third-round qualifiers in 2008, they fell to second-last in the 2011-12 edition, losing all six matches. Tajikistan and Lebanon lost to Singapore in 2008, but the 18th-placed Tajiks and ninth-placed Lebanese have improved while the Lions regressed.

Evidently, the S-League (under its current format) is not very beneficial to Singapore’s quest for international football excellence and glory.

It is true that Singapore won consecutive Asean championships in 2004 and 2007, but with the Lions supported by naturalised players, those were expected victories.

Contrary to Mr Liew’s claims, Singapore did come close to winning top regional titles before 1996, having qualified thrice for the South-east Asian Games final in the 1980s. During the S-League era, Singapore has never progressed beyond the semi-finals.

Arguably, Singapore’s 1977 and 1980 Malaysia Cup victories were akin to modern-day South Korean or Japanese league title triumphs.

South Korea and Japan are current Asian giants, while Malaysia was similarly dominant between 1970 and 1980. The Malaysians qualified for the 1972 and 1980 Olympics, confirming Malaysia as one of Asia’s top three at that time, and the standard of Malaysian domestic football was conceivably among Asia’s most robust.

Perhaps the 1977 and 1980 Lions should be bestowed a special national honour for their invaluable contributions to creating a sporting nation.

The Lions of old were roaring champions, but the S-League-bred Lions have yet to roar.

Michael Ang

**********

My thoughts:

I have always enjoyed reading Michael Ang’s letters on the local sporting scene which regularly appear in the newspapers.

Ang, in  case you’re wondering, is a former sports journalist with Mediacorp before he uprooted and moved to Canada several years back. In that sense, I feel that he knows his stuff, and that is why some of his observations are usually quite spot on.

The fact that he is bothering to write about local sport despite having migrated to another country shows how passionate he is about the local sporting scene. And it’s great to have such a voice because honestly, you don’t get to read  many comment pieces on local sport in the papers these days.

Ang’s latest letter appeared in The Straits Times today (31 March 2012), and once again, he makes a compelling argument, refuting another letter-writer’s theory that the S-League produces much better international players for the Lions .

Certainly, there is merit in his argument that the S-League in its present format, has not been producing quality players for the national team.

Since 2008, Singapore’s standing on the international stage has been falling. After winning our third Tiger/Suzuki Cup/Asean Football Championship in 2007, we’ve gone backwards.

To be fair, 2008 was an exciting year for the Lions. I remember being quite excited by their progress into the third round of the Asian World Cup qualifiers, and even though they did not make it to the final qualifying stage in the end, that campaign was marked by some promising displays and performances. But since then, it’s been going downhill.

We were knocked out of the semi-finals of the Suzuki Cup in 2008, and then, horror of horrors,  failed to even qualify from the  group stages at the 2010 edition, finishing third behind Vietnam and the Philippines in Group B. Taking a leaf from their seniors, our U-23 team – who had won bronze medals at the 2007 and 2009 SEA Games – did not qualify from the group stage of last year’s SEA Games football competition.

Then came the Lions’ very poor and embarrassing campaign in the third round of the World Cup qualifiers, one marked by thrashings, abject and dispirited performances, and games in which we were completely outplayed, which made every one realise how much the Lions have declined since their 2005 and 2007 heydays.

The S-League may have widened the pool for potential talent for the national team but clearly, the recent talents that are being produced are not good enough to compete at Asean level, much less Asian level.  But, to be fair to the clubs, I feel that has much to do with the kind of budgets that they are forced to operate on. When you think about it, the recent glory days of Singapore football coincided with the golden period of the S-League, from 1999 to 2003/4, when clubs had more resources to hunt down and sign good foreign players.

In the past two years, I get the sense that things have started looking a little (BIG STRESS ON ‘a little’) promising again in the S-League, although you wouldn’t have known it, given the scarce coverage given to the league by the local media. But hopefully, this will gradually build up into another golden period for the S-League, and then by extension, for the Lions.

Yours in sport

Singapore Sports Fan

After notching first win, Terry Pathmanathan’s Jaguars will continue to improve

This short news snippet (right) appeared in The Straits Times on 18 May.

The news snippet on Tanjong Pahar's first win of the season (The Straits Times, 18 May 2011)

But don’t let its brevity fool you. I think we could see its significance unfolding over the next few months.

Today’s version of Tanjong Pagar United may be a far cry from the glory days of the once-proud club’s early years (ie 1996-2002) in the S-League.

Back then, with Robert Alberts and later Tohari Paijan at the helm, they boasted of local stars like Lim Tong Hai, Steven Tan and S. Subramani and exciting foreign players like Dragan Talajic, Aleksandar Duric, Sutee Suksomkit  and the Senegalese Twin Towers of Nicodeme Boucher and Boubacar Seck.

However, I think their narrow win over Woodlands Wellington on Wednesday, which snapped their 13-game winless streak, could mark  a turning point for the Jaguars.

Today’s Tanjong Pagar would be more akin to the Young Lions of 2009.

Significantly, Terry Pathmanathan, the coach of that Young Lions team, is the man in charge of the  Jaguars today.

I remember that Young Lions team well.

Although it was made up of many young players, and the average age of the team was 19, they surprised many people with their tenacity, discipline and great fitness.

Many of the top teams that season always found it hard to play against them and would often come away with narrow wins at best

What Pathmanathan did was to continuously work on his players’ fitness and technique. He made sure they played simple football as he worked on raising their fitness levels. As the season went on, the Young Lions grew in strength.

Their football wasn’t that attractive, at times it was even dismal,  but it was nevertheless enough to help them to go on occasional small, unbeaten runs.

In the end, the Young Lions finished the season in eighth spot with nine wins, seven draws and 14 defeats. Not a bad record for a bunch of youngsters.

But the best was yet to be.

The squad then went off to Laos for the SEA Games where they surprised every one by winning a bronze in the Under-23 football competition, equaling the bronze-medal effort by the more star-studded Young Lions of 2007.

Tanjong Pagar coach Terry Pathmanathan

For this season’s S-League, Pathmanathan and the club were dealt a terrible hand by the Football Association of Singapore, one that remains an indictment of the state of our professional league.

 Tanjong Pagar’s application to join the S-League was only approved in late December, leaving the former Singapore captain scrambling for players a month before the start of the new season.

He was practically scrapping the bottom of the barrel as most of the better players had already been snapped up by the other clubs.

Apart from a number of former national U-17 trainees, he had to conduct open trials to fill up the remaining spots in his squad. He eventually managed to do so – with amateurs and even tertiary students.

Although he did also manage to sign Koreans Kim Jong Oh, Kim Syeong Kyu and Japanese Takaya Kawanabe to add experience and more steel to the spine of the team, the fact that they are all relatively young (all are under the age of 24) means that there will always be a limit to the sort of influence they can exert on proceedings during matches.

But I am sure Pathmanathan has been going about developing this rag-tag team in the same way as he did with the Young Lions.

I am sure he will be doing the same things as in 2009 ie focusing on bringing up their fitness levels and working on their technique and making sure they play simple football.

It’s just that unlike the Young Lions of 2009, he has had to do it with players of a much lower level of competency in football this time.

Still, I am confident that Tanjong Pagar’s win over Woodlands will not turn out to be their only triumph of the season.

In fact, I will stick out my neck to say that, now buoyed by the confidence-boosting win, the Jaguars will continue to improve from here on, manage a couple more wins and draws for the rest of the season and end up either ninth or eighth.

Mind you, it is very possible because right now, they are only three points behind the Young Lions and five behind a very poor Geylang United.

If they can do so, it will really be a feather in Pathmanathan’s cap, and can only add to the former Singapore skipper’s growing stature as a highly talented and capable coach.

Pathmanathan has already shown before that he is blessed with the ability to make lemonade from lemons. I am sure he can do it again this season.

Yours in sport

Singapore Sports Fan

Why paid vendors should just focus on what they are paid to do, and stop tweeting rubbish

I saw this on Red Sports’ Facebook page. It’s a tweet by Ian Mullane, the CEO of Vanda Sports, which has been hired by the Football Association of Singapore to be the branding and marketing consultant for the Young Lions in this season’s S-League:

@voxsports &@redsports are a joke. They claim to do sport and they haven’t even mentioned or covered the start of the S League.

That was four days ago.

Today, he continues his online assault:

Happy to see ST and Today giving solid #SLeague coverage. Still some supposed sports news services embarrassing themselves though.

Basically, Mullane was criticising Red Sports and Vanda Sports for not covering the S-League.

This is what I can’t stand about these types of people.

Hired by a national sports body to promote a local football team, and by extension, a local football league, they suddenly think they are the authority on local sports coverage in Singapore, and on deciding who is doing a good or bad job on local sports reportage.

There is a term for this in Malay: Kurang ajar.

There is another term for this in Hokkien: kay poh.

I share mr brown and mr miyagi’s sense of outrage.

Seriously, why should Mullane care what Red Sports and Vanda Sports are choosing to cover for their own sites? Why should it be anybody else’s business but theirs alone?

And think about this: if Mullane hadn’t been HIRED to market and brand the Young Lions, would he be going about clamouring for more local coverage of the Young Lions, the S-League or local football for that matter?

Would he then be so fawning towards the local press and other media outlets and so generous with his praise of them because of their coverage of the S-League?

Bottom line: Dude, you are a PAID VENDOR, hired to deliver a particular service. You are not a God-send. So please, know your place and stop being such an embarrassing eunuch.

By going on like this, you are no better than Andy Gray, the ‘jabbering baffoon’ you dissed in one of your previous tweets.

End of the day, remember what they say about the proverbial empty vessel…

To the guys at Red Sports and Vox Sports, keep up the good work.

Yours in sport
Singapore Sports Fan