BoLASEPaKO.COM - A Blog on Singapore Football

Aide Iskandar lifted the AFF championship trophy ( as credited ) I initially planned to post this blog entry immediately after the Lions' successful run in the ASEAN Football Championship. However, I decided to wait and gauge the reactions before proceeding. MEDIA CELEBRATES, BUT CRITICS REMAIN While the media and fans are celebrating the national team’s triumph in retaining their regional supremacy, there remains a group of sceptics who dismiss this as a significant achievement. “They just got lucky. Look at the midfield - they couldn’t handle the Thais,” remarked one critic I overheard. Another chimed in, “Is this the standard of football we’re paying $4,000 for?” And, of course, the perennial comment surfaced: “They’re not as good as the players from the past national teams.” If the first two criticisms hold some weight for certain people, fair enough. However, I do have thoughts on the last statement. Just a few days before the second leg of the semi-final between Malaysia and ...

Pretty cramp inside the Tampines' club office after their 2-0 win over the Indian giants Mohun Bagan. The top picture depicted an official (the man with the moustace, third from the left, facing the camera) from Mohun Bagan sharing his thoughts on the game. While the bottom picture depicted coach Vorawan Chitavanich of Tampines Rovers who appeared confident of his team's strike power despite the fact that two-goal hero Noh Alam Shah will be suspended for the quarter-finals fixture.

Finally, the cat is out of the bag when Korean "Super" Reds' supremo Hong In Woong admitted "up to a third" of the players were not intended in the original setup. So much so we were all made believed that these guys are here to challenge to be among the top three spot of the league. Yet an another disappointing moment as the "lapse" has once again highlighted the fact that the inclusion of the Koreans was done in a "hurried" fashion. As nothing was in black and white in the first place, so we can't point our finger to Hong for this "mishap" but to blame the "take for granted" attitude we have all this while. At the same time, I'm pretty disappointed with the "positive" attitude of the league authority towards these under-performing "aliens". To be frank, I guess only the Albirex Niigata of the 2004 season is ranked to be the "best " foreign team the league see...

Frankly speaking, unbelievable was the first word that came to my mind when the news first broke out. Here is a man whose legacy lays on the fact he’s one of the most successful coaches in the football fraternities on both sides of the Causeway. Having been through the period which we are fighting so hard to ward off “that thing”, yet here we have a well-respected man convicted for the trying to play around with “that thing”. Though we hardly spoke to each during his stint as the coach of Tampines Rovers and Paya Lebar Punggol, but for that infamous quote he mentioned had all but diminished whatever respect I have this man. “I have the best of the worst” as he was quoted during the introductory press conference for the then league debutant Paya Lebar Punggol.(merged with Sengkang Marine to form Sengkang Punggol after just a season.) For someone in him to mention something like this was totally unacceptable. For Heaven sake man, if then you weren’t keen to take the job why ridiculed the...