The Football Association of Singapore did not address so many of the issues plaguing Singapore football at its annual Congress held on 25 September, based on the summary which is posted on its website.
What a shame.
Even though it would have the best platform to share how it planned to navigate past the various issues faced by the sport, and explain what it was doing to build the sport up again.
Issues like:
- insufficient local Singapore Premier League clubs, which leads to lesser opportunities for players to develop and a rather limited talent pool for any national coach to choose from.
- zero football competitions at the school level for two years since the pandemic began and how it intended to let kids participate in competitions again as the country moves from a pandemic to Covid-19 being endemic.
- the drop in operating revenue and how it intends to raise more money to fund its activities in the upcoming financial year and reasons why its sponsorship dollars from corporate companies has dipped to just $600-odd thousand.
- the state of the national football team and what it intends to do to ensure our national players get enough competition or match exposure outside of the regular competitions.
- what it is doing to help level up the state of women’s football in Singapore and ensure that there are enough resources put into developing the women’s game in Singapore at all levels.
- what it is doing to develop futsal and beach football in Singapore, especially if fields are a problem, and the fact that we are an island surrounded by water.
- how much an average local player in the SPL earns and whether such information should be made public in the interest of fairness and protecting the young players who see football as a viable career.
- updates on the Unleash the Roar project since the Deputy President Bernard Tan is himself a co-chair of the project.
When the only major announcement from its annual Congress is how it is intending to tweak its own failed U-23 policy for the SPL clubs, it potentially points to an organisation which is probably not aware of how underwhelming its performance has been, especially for a sport considered Singapore’s most popular and most followed.
Perhaps the best indicator of the FAS’ performance over the last year is how much corporate companies are willing to back it and its initiatives, and the use of football as a social leveller.
Based on its own annual report, very little, clearly.
Illustration: SW Strategies
