SINGAPORE — Sport Singapore (SportSG) has acknowledged that its ActiveSG Football Academy may have affected the businesses of private academies, but its chief executive officer Lim Teck Yin is not making any apologies for how the Academy is run.

Lim was responding yesterday to TODAY’s recent report that some private academies have suffered a 20 to 25 percent drop in their student numbers since the launch of the ActiveSG Football Academy in April last year. 

There are now eight ActiveSG Football Academy centres around the island with a total enrolment of over 600 students.

An advantage that ActiveSG enjoys is the ability to keep their programmes affordable because of Sport SG’s ownership of facilities.

It costs S$130 for a maximum of 29 ActiveSG Football Academy sessions, or S$4.50 per session, while private academies charge around S$30 to $40 per session. 

However, Lim says ActiveSG’s mission is to give more kids and teens the opportunity to play football.

“We recognise there are many children who want to play football but not all schools offer a football curriculum. Many schools do not have capacity to absorb those who’d like to play beyond the schools teams and that’s where ActiveSG comes in,” said Lim yesterday during ActiveSG Football Academy’s first football festival of the year at Jurong East Stadium which drew more than 200 kids.

Another objective of the academy “is to have an organised and well-defined pathway” for children to continue playing football when they leave school.

Lim also believes the private academies already benefit from discounted usage fees and SportSG, as the local sport governing body, has to leverage on their strengths to “influence” the overall football ecosystem.

“For those that don’t own facilities, many actually operate on very heavily subsidised public facilities,” he noted. 

“I don’t want to make this point come across as if they should be very grateful or thankful. I am just suggesting that there is an ecosystem out there … (and) that everyone can be part of it.”

Lim acknowledged private academies might suffer “some degree of loss” of clients but pointed out that with over 600 participants across eight centres, ActiveSG brings “more capacity to the table”.

“We are listening very carefully to what they are saying, but my reaction isn’t to raise the price of our programme,” he said. 

“Today, we have about 19,000 booking slots for football fields in a year and the requests from private academies (number) about 700.

“They recognise that we have inherent advantages (for facilities) and I think for SportsSG, we must play to our strengths when we try to nurture the sporting culture.”

The director of local private academy 2Touch Soccer School, Khidhir Khamis, agreed that all parties play a part in the ecosystem but told TODAY “more” can be done. He suggested that academies can be graded according to how closely their syllabus aligns with the national curriculum developed by the Football Association of Singapore (FAS).

“The number of disapproved bookings for private academies’ usage of facilities far outweigh the approved ones,” Khidhir said. 

“Sport SG should enable private academies to use their facilities, provided certain factors like price, quality of programme and value given to the end users are considered and graded. With that, the public can (better) decide where they want go to.” 

Lim assured that SportSG and FAS are keen to engage these academies further in the coming months. FAS vice-president Bernard Tan revealed that a “consultative cluster” has been formed to do this, whileLim added that some of the more prominent academies have already approached SportSG for collaboration. 

“We want to work together, but they must (also) be prepared to work with the national curriculum,” Lim said.

That curriculum, developed by FAS technical director Michel Sablon, will apply to the new Active Cubs Programme - a merger between ActiveSG Football Academy’s junior programme (for children aged six to 12) with FAS’s Cubs Programme (aged seven to 12). 

Both ActiveSG and FAS signed a memorandum of understanding yesterday to streamline the existing grassroots football programmes in Singapore. ActiveSG will manage all Active Cubs programmes island-wide while FAS lends its expertise on youth football development. 

FAS will also focus on grooming more grassroots coaches and enhancing the quality of coaching through various programmes and courses, which will also be open to private academy coaches.

Sablon explained that there will be a demand for more coaches as more youths take up football. “It is crucial that coaches are not overwhelmed… so each child is able to receive the required amount of attention,” said the Belgian. 

“Our Active Cubs programme will follow a strict maximum 1:12 coach to student ratio and we want all grassroots programmes to follow suit.”

FAS vice-president Tan hailed the collaboration as a “big step” in the FAS’s plans to eventually develop a “more competitive” senior national team.

“When we started our Cubs Programme… I said that at some stage, we would want a private or public academy to take over,” he said. “But (we would) lay the basis, with the curriculum and technical advice that Michel has designed.

“The merger makes sense... (in terms of) pooling resources… (and) also that there’s a chance for us now to work with a larger organisation to set and raise standards. 

“If we can get it right, we’ll have a pool of players coming up who have developed the right basic movements and technical skills - this gives us a basis to form a national team of a substantially different quality.”

He added that FAS is working with the Singapore Land Authority to open up more playing spaces for football.

ActiveSG Football Academy also announced a partnership with Hougang United to be its ninth training centre, following on previous collaborations with S.League sides Tampines Rovers and Geylang International. There are plans to work with champions Albirex Niigata next.

SportSG is also “currently in discussions” with the People’s Association, who run the Passion Children’s Football Programme, to explore opportunities to further streamline efforts,” said Lim.