The Young Lions lost again with the same scoreline at the group stage of this year’s South East Asia Games at Vietnam. This time it was against Malaysia and after the lost to Myanmar, same 0-2, the team has been booted out of the competition even before the Opening Ceremony. Twice in as many tournaments.
In both ST and in Today both papers used the word luckless. Both papers hailed their efforts heroic and deserved a medal for it.
Yeah right.
I watched the match and well, yah they had spirit. They had some nice moves and plenty, plenty of chances to hit the back of the net. Not once. Two matches with no goals to show. Luckless? Nope. Plain lack of class.
One said we were unlucky because Malaysia was having an off-day. I think its quite clear that Malaysia was playing a good tactical game of letting Singapore come to them and attack at the break. Two good reasons. Singapore can’t score. Malaysian forwards have the speed. And that’s how they got the goals. Two quick counter-attacks and two goals.
Yah we had most of the ball and midfielders were working hard and creating, but what’s the most important thing in soccer? Goals. Ball in the net. Weren’t they thought that? Maybe somehow the fact that being last in the so-called professional S-League didn’t ring any alarm bells.
A look at the “table” showed that the Young Lions were last in the s-league, scoring 33 goals in…33 matches and conceding 77 goals. That’s almost 2.something goals per match. Maybe that’s why we’ve been losing 0-2 for two consecutive matches.
Why then in the first place did everyone, from the administrators to the coach to the press kept insisting that we will reach the semi-finals? If the Young Lions can’t even beat any less than decent teams in S-League, in what ways did they think of beating our neighbours?
The Malaysian team, also under-23s, were almost the same group that thrashed Singapore 4-0 at the National Stadium last year.
There’s something very very wrong with local soccer. Standards spinning downwards. The professional S-League is not producing any decent soccer players. There is no decent youth training programs that brought in any young players.
Everyone should not think that Singapore soccer can stand with our neighbours. We can’t even beat Myanmar. What about Vietnam. I don’t even need to talk about Indonesia or Thailand. We are too far back.
Come Saturday when Singapore faces Cambodia. If the Young Lions can’t score a goal, it’ll be a complete disgrace. We might just have to rethink everything related, from Goal2010, to the S-League and start afresh.
