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S’pore’s national football team lacking ‘young stars’

The article, “I did the right thing with the Lions: Bernd Stange” (Oct 4), captured the frank assessments of former national coach Bernd Stange. The German coach had previously helmed top European teams such as East Germany and Belarus, which had players Matthias Sammer and Aleksandr Hleb.

The Young Lions.  FAS file photo

The Young Lions. FAS file photo

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Chan Siang Ming

The article, “I did the right thing with the Lions: Bernd Stange” (Oct 4), captured the frank assessments of former national coach Bernd Stange. The German coach had previously helmed top European teams such as East Germany and Belarus, which had players Matthias Sammer and Aleksandr Hleb.

Truth be told, Stange and his team were certainly not outplayed by Thailand and Malaysia at the 2014 Suzuki Cup where they were just seconds away from progressing to the semi-finals — until the referee decided to award the Malaysians a penalty.

Stange’s team had then included youngsters such as Amirul Adli, Khairul Nizam, Shahfiq Ghani, Afiq Yunos and Sahil Suhaimi. All of them were aged 23 and below. The oldest players in that team were Shahril Ishak and Hassan Sunny, then 30 years old.

Where are the young stars today? How many of them have played for the Lions since the appointment of V Sundramoorthy 18 months ago?

We had a good mix of experience and youth in 2014 as Stange rightly set his sights on the bigger goal: Qualification for the 2019 AFC Asian Cup.

Unfortunately, Sundramoorthy decided to go with experience and as Stange put it aptly, the national coach would then be considered a failure if he doesn’t get the results with a team comprising many veterans.

Two wins in 18 matches under Sundramoorthy is a very poor record, and a national coach in any part of the world with such statistics would have been asked to leave.

Under Stange, Singapore scored freely and defeated the likes of Myanmar and Cambodia with ease, but these teams have since defeated our Lions under Sundramoorthy’s leadership.

Aside from results, Stange’s Lions also passed the ball around the pitch before launching attacks from the flanks — a sight which is enjoyable to watch.

On the other hand, Sundram decided to opt for senior players and insisted on pumping long balls to his strikers who are nowhere near 1.8m tall. At the same time, he is not obtaining the results.

It is strange that Sundramoorthy continued to call up veterans such as Fahruddin Mustaffic and Shahril Ishak, but he does not select them in his line-ups. Why not allow one or two youngsters to be part of the team then and learn from their seniors?

If the Football Association of Singapore (FAS) really believes in accountability as Mr Yazeen Buhari had claimed (“FAS raps technical director Sablon for comments, calling it ‘unproductive and unbecoming’”; Sept 29), then why hasn’t FAS publicly accounted for the 2016 Suzuki Cup’s failure and the winless streak of Sundramoorthy for almost a year?

It’s time for FAS to walk the talk and not simply pay lip service to sexy buzzwords such as “accountability”.

 

 

 

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