Alarm bells put on silent for Singapore football in the past week

It was a bad week for Singapore football and the alarm bells were off.

Weixiang Lim| March 31, 01:35 PM

With a nation occupied with grieving over Lee Kuan Yew's passing over the past week, the FAS has been cut some slack for results that signal Singapore’s descent to minnow level in South East Asian football.

The Singapore U22 team containing the best of Singapore’s future football prospects including Fandi Ahmad’s son Irfan Fandi, named in 2014 as one of English newspaper The Guardian's 40 best young talents in world football, and Adam Swandi, YOG star who spent 2 years in France with FC Metz could only draw 0-0 with Laos in the AFC U23 Championship 2016 Qualifiers. The Cubs then went on to be thrashed 5-0 by China.

Some of the responses on the FAS facebook page after the draw with Laos, which the senior side beat 11-0 in 2007:

FAS comments 2

FAS comments

A week before that, our U23 team actually lost to Cambodia’s U22 team 2-0 in a friendly match played in Singapore – the first time a Singapore team has ever lost to a Cambodian side!

In the same period of time, the senior side fell to a 2-0 defeat in Korat to a Thailand side missing its stars from the AFF Suzuki Cup 2014 winning team.

Alarming results but somehow the alarm bells in the FAS are all spoilt or turned to silent mode.

Singapore’s minnow status will probably be confirmed tonight if the team loses to Guam, 14 places below us in the Fifa rankings, tonight at the Jalan Besar Stadium.

Here are some fan predictions on FAS’ facebook page:

FAS comments 3

Do go down to show your support.

Broken Promises?

After promising that he had the contacts to bring in the big teams to play in Singapore, National coach Bernd Stange is now saying his friends like former Manchester United assistant coach Carlos Queiroz and former England coach Fabio Capello do not want to bring their teams here because our Sports Hub pitch is 'not ready'.

To be exact, he said, “Unfortunately, a lot of teams refuse to play with Singapore on an artificial pitch. As you know, even Japan refused to have training sessions here before they played Brazil. Please don't point your finger at me. I cannot keep my promises if we don't have a grass pitch."

Which was a roundabout way of pointing a finger at the Sports Hub people, who have since refuted his comment in a 31 Mar ChannelNewsAsia report through their senior director for corporate communications and stakeholder management Jose Raymond: "Work has been ongoing and has been progressing very well, and will be implemented in time for the SEA Games in June. The Barclays Asia Trophy, which will be held for the first time in Singapore, will involve top English Premiership sides Arsenal, Everton and Stoke City at the National Stadium in July."

Perhaps Stange and the Sports Hub people would like to meet and talk it out face-to-face?

Top photo from Lim Weixiang.