Singapore football needs more players of other races

Football Association of Singapore (FAS) President Zainudin Nordin recently told MediaCorp’s Suria channel that the nation must pull in all races to play football. Indeed, there has been a significant change from the past.

In 1966, the Singapore squad that finished fourth in the Asian Games had one Eurasian, seven Malays and nine Chinese players. From 1977 to 1984, the team had about four to seven Chinese players and enjoyed some success. Chinese-Singaporeans’ involvement in football then dwindled.

With the introduction of the foreign talent scheme, Singapore football seemed to have revived, as we won the ASEAN Football Federation Cup a few times. Recently, we dropped most of our naturalised citizens, and some results were devastating: Losing 6-1 to China and 4-0 to Jordan.

Most of us acknowledge our Malay-Singaporeans’ footballing flair. But something is wrong with our development and selection processes to have only 10 per cent of the squad represented by other races.

It is often said that Chinese-Singaporeans choose studies over football. As football is a team sport, though, I would not be surprised if some Chinese, Eurasian and Indian players feel somewhat shut out because their Malay peers play among themselves better.

In the past, Chinese-Singaporeans could converse in Malay, so it was easy to gel on the pitch. The FAS cannot avoid these issues, or else we will never have enough of a talent pool.

Maybe a policy of having coaches speak only in English to school squads would go some way in attracting talent from other ethnic backgrounds. Alternatively, we could have a pilot project to tap boys of other races to play football and develop their skills.

If all else fails, it would seem that the foreign talent scheme is the way to go for Singapore football, reflecting our vibrant society of immigrants.