a day ago
Billionaire FAS president Forrest Li has the financial means and the zeal, but are these enough to revive Singapore football?
Fans and commentators also pointed to organisational development as another area that Mr Li and his team can address in the near term.
Mr Yeo the football observer said: 'FAS has been critically short on technical staff, and marketing and communications staff. Both are essential if the association is to run well and engage fans better.'
Indeed, engagement and communication with its supporters is an area where fans believe more can be done.
An example of this is the organisation's online presence.
Mr Chuan Rei Hern, a 19-year-old student and avid follower of Singapore football, noted that 'basic statistics' such as information on the SPL's top goal scorers cannot be found on FAS' websites.
He believes such issues that can be quickly solved and improved upon should be the new council's first order of business.
'How do new fans even get into the Singapore football circle when baseline information is so disjointed and difficult to reach?' he asked.
Although it is undoubtedly more complicated than updating a website, focusing on improving the standard of coaching is another aspect that could feasibly be done during Mr Li's tenure.
Mr de Roo, who previously held roles as technical director in Australia's FFA Centre of Excellence and the Football Association of Malaysia, identified Mr Gavin Lee – assistant coach of the Singapore men's national team and former BG Tampines Rovers head coach – as one of the most promising coaches in the nation today.
However, he noted that this prominence is a product of an individual effort to go 'above and beyond' to improve himself, as opposed to being a product of the coaching education here.
'If you want to develop better players for your senior national team, the players have to work with better coaches and that means you have to develop better coaches.'
WHAT MIGHT BE OUT OF REACH?
However well-resourced or well-connected Mr Li might be, there are other fundamental challenges that he and his council may struggle to solve.
At the heart of these challenges is that not everything in football is controlled or dictated by the football association alone, observers said.
One common problem raised was the lack of unity across the ecosystem. While clubs, schools and private academies all contribute to the sport, they often operate in silos with little alignment in objectives or standards.
Mr Vengadasalam, who now runs the Woodlands Lions FC, said that he often has players who are unable to train with his club's academy, for instance, due to clashes with the schedules of their schools' co-curricular activities.
Mr Vengadasalam believes such a disconnect between the school system and academies like his means that player development is often halted.
It is this fragmentation in the fraternity that might be a hurdle too large to overcome, Mr Raymond said.
'The schools' football system is an entire ecosystem on its own,' he added.
'It's a challenge to bring them all together and to agree on a technical strategy or a certain point of action.'
Mr Yeo the football observer believes that one of the most intractable challenges Mr Li and the new FAS council faces is infrastructure, or the lack of control over it.
'No club apart from the Sailors owns any facility whatsoever. Even if they're a top team and they play in the SPL, they don't own a stadium,' he noted.
This is not unique to Singapore.
Professional clubs in Japan, for instance, do not own their stadiums either. However, Mr Yeo pointed out that Japanese local governments work closely with clubs to ensure facilities are prioritised for football use.
'Priority does not mean that other sports cannot use those facilities,' he said, but there must be a 'football lens' when infrastructure is built or refurbished.
He gave the example of Singapore's National Stadium, which has a 'lay-and-play' natural grass pitch system that involves laying specially grown turf for major events. This allows for quick pitch replacement and ensures a high-quality playing surface.
'But land scarcity is the biggest problem. Even if we have a bottomless pit of money, you can't just build stadiums for every single club or even training pitches. There are so many parties with conflicting agendas when it comes to land in Singapore," he added.
'So you have a difficult situation that I don't think even (Mr Li) can resolve. He has to try to convince the government as to why it's important to build these facilities that can improve football professionalism."
He continued: 'This would be the biggest challenge, even bigger than developing talent.'
Still, those in the fraternity remain hopeful that change is possible, as long as it is done collaboratively and with conviction.
Mr de Roo said: 'It starts with recognising where (things) go wrong, how to fix it and then appointing quality people to do that.
'Then make sure that they have the authority to do so, because there's no point appointing quality people if they are still hamstrung. Back them up, facilitate them and be strong.
'With infrastructure, you have the involvement of the ministries and other stakeholders. Sit at the table – you all want the same outcome, discuss how you are going to do that.
'Everybody tries to tell me that Singaporeans don't care about football. That's not true. They love football, but they've just lost faith.'
