Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from September, 2011

Purpose defeated after July's MOU?

The mood is just so different this time as the Singapore contingent embarked for their annual trip to Shah Alam for the annual Sultan of Selangor Cup tournament. The coaches carried the Singapore contingent to Shah Alam This year's edition coincides with the reigning Sultan's 10th anniversary on the throne, which the organizers had promised to make a grand event that two former EPL stars Jason McAteer and Jesper Bloomqvist are being roped in for the Selangor Selection in the marquee match against the Singapore national team, who will be using this match for tuning up to their remaining World Cup qualifier matches. More significantly, the meeting also marks the first meeting of both sides since the signing of the joint MOU between FAS and FAM. At the R & R stop at Machap After all, both Singapore and Selangor are two of the most celebrated sides in Malayan football history. The joint declaration penned in July would be seen by many as the prelude to the revival

"Live" Tweet-dating of the Sultan of Selangor Cup 2011

I'm not sure how if this thing gonna work but at least I would like to give a try. For those on twitter, you may want to share your thoughts on the event by tweet your say by include " #SOSCup2011 ", while at the meantime I am praying hard the bridge data roaming by my mobile provider will be working fine through the event. Below is the widget of the tweets related to the event (your tweets should reflect on here as well if you use the mentioned # and please do feel free to send your message to those who are heading up, thanks. THE TWEET WIDGET HAD BEEN PLACED UNDER THE TWITTER MENU ON THE RIGHT SIDE MENU, THANKS

Get ready for Shah Alam ...

In a media release by the Football Association of Singapore (FAS) this evening, national coach Raddy Avramovic had named the squad of 18 players to represent the Singapore Selection in their annual fixture against the Selangor Selection in the Sultan of Selangor Cup this coming Saturday at Shah Alam. The Singapore Selection The squad list as follows. 1 Izwan Mahbud GK 2 Ruzaini Zainal MF 3 Safuwan Baharudin DF 4 Shahdan Sulaiman MF 5 Hamqaamal Shah DF 6 Ismail Yunos DF 7 Hafiz Rahim FW 8 Juma'at Jantan DF 9 Lionel Lewis GK 10 Isa Halim MF 11 Shi Jiayi MF 12 Daniel Bennett DF 13 Fazrul Nawaz FW 14 Shaiful Esah DF 15 Noh Rahman DF 16 Delwinder Singh DF 17 Aleksandar Duric FW 18 Shahril Ishak MF

Propel from obscurity - scribe on COE football

I must admit I have not been giving much attention to COE football until this afternoon at the Old Police Academy. Alerted by "Liga Singapura" that the title decider was going to be staged at the once Police training facilities, I decided to head down with my camera to snap some shots between Home United and Tanjong Pagar United. Tanjong Pagar Utd's COE U16 team Home Utd's COE U16 first eleven The equation of the match was simple, all Home United needed to do was a draw with the junior Jaguars and the Centre Of Excellence (COE) U16 league title is theirs. At the end of the day, not only the junior Protectors did not lose to the match, but also convincingly beat their opponents 3-0 to seal the title. Despite long tucked in the obscurity from general football public, the standard of play has been "competitive" according to "Liga Singapura" who cater a separate blog - "Information on Singapore youth football" to focus on COE

I should have QUIT!!!

The beauty of the Cup competition lives on in the RHB Singapore Cup as the "Final Four" - Etoile FC, Home United, Albirex Niigata (Singapore), and Hougang United fought till the very end to see the emerging of the Protectors and the White Swans for the 19th November date at JBS. Fred Mendy (pictured above right) scored against his old team to send HUFC to the final Both first-leg fixtures of the "Final Four" saw both the Stars and White Swans agonizingly forgo their lead in the dying moments of those matches to see their respective opponents - Home United and Hougang United crawl back to level terms to square off the encounter. At one point, such a fightback was thought impossible, until the dying moments of the match highlighted the differences between a knockout cup tie and a round-robin fixture. Mendy propelled HU at expense of old bosses Yet, it wasn't really a nail-bitter when both Etoile and Home Utd met for their recurring fixture at Queenstown Stad

When honour become a liability

Based on their line up in their league fixture against Albirex Niigata (Singapore) that featured the likes of Lionel Lewis, Shi Jiayi, Qiu Li and Juma'at Jantan, one question floated into my mind and made me wonder if these Home United's Lions (and the rest from other teams in the S.League) felt that national duty is become a liability for having to juggle their club commitments after such a hectic international duty? Don't get me wrong, it's always a honour to play for national team but the welfare of these fatigued Lions must be taken care of avoid burnt out and getting themselves injured unnecessary in time like this when their club's priorities are equally important. After all, out of those above-mentioned we already had a few of them reportedly having some physical "un-well being" like Lionel got himself injured (after just returned from an adductor injury) in the loss against Iraq (pictured above receiving treatment ) that prompted him to reco

[Instant Reaction] The musical chair game just continue ...

The word "stability" is probably never exist in the dictionary of the league authority with the latest news that broke out this morning (screen-grab below) that suggested the possibility of 2009's League Cup winners DPMM of Brunei of rejoining the league. I guess we shouldn't be too surprise of this latest development. I am not referring to the application of the Brunians, but more of the fact that opaque selection criteria that seems to be flawed. After all, that perceived "stringent" procedure did result the admission of those Chinese "clubs" , Sporting Afrique , etc. with the fans scratching their heads over another round of "musical chairs" sequence.

"Radio Rosak" post

Saw this tweet message (pictured above) awhile ago and would like to reiterate an earlier blog post that emphasized that months ago. Honestly speaking, how many people (except for those in the scene) are aware about the excitement? I think this is something my fellow blogger, Antony Sutton of "Jakarta Casual" has been pondering over several times on his blog why most Singaporeans football fans are inclined to English and European football and despise what they have at their own backyard. People have been blaming the quality, which of course I don't deny the fact that it may not be anywhere we seen on cable. Jovial scene after another Hougang United's victory at home Yet there were some really good games I have seen this season particularly from Albirex Niigata (Singapore) and Hougang United (for those who follow the scene should understand where I came from). Unfortunately, the sad fact is that when such good games were played, there were little much c

It's not kids' football after all for the Iraqis

Apparently, the Iraqis did not find any issue playing on the a rtificial surface of Jalan Besar Stadium which was blasted by Brazilian legend Zico , their coach as a surface meant for kids footballers a day before. In fact, the visiting side looked fairly comfortable on the plastic surface with much of the attacking play by them in the first half. One of Safuwan's (no 2) heroics - foiled Nashat Akram from advance Whereas the hosts - Singapore were confined largely in their defensive third to absorb those threats from the Middle-Easterners with young upstart Safuwan Baharudin giving another good account of himself to defray much of the threat in the first 45 minutes. Not the same thing can be said about the attacking upfront though for the Lions. Some flashes of brilliance were shown with Qiu Li making some inroads from the left flank to unsettle the Iraqis' backline in the first half. SAFFC's Fazrul Nawaz (no 10) replaced Qiu Li at the start of the second half

"Artificial field meant for children" Zico

The man they called the "White Pele" never failed to reiterate his opinion on having the game be played on an artificial surface after being made known to the media a day earlier. "To me personally, I think good football should be played on natural grass and artificial surface shall be used by small children in training instead." said Brazilian legend Zico, the newly appointed Iraqi national coach at the pre-match press conference of the 2014 World Cup qualifier match between Singapore and Iraq. Iraq national coach Zico took over the post less than a month ago Despite his unpleasantness over the choice of playing surface at Jalan Besar Stadium, coach Zico added he still respects the decision undertaken by both FIFA and AFC for this match. Besides the pitch, coach Zico also voiced his concern over the scheduling and the grouping of the qualifiers' fixtures. Said the former Flamengo superstar: "Perhaps, the organizers should be looking into how th

[Instant Reaction] ROBBED!! [edited]

Watched the match at "Botak Jones" near SPH instead I think those who saw the match just now on TV would agree that bad decisions against us had cost us dearly at Kunming. Already handicapped by the climate that bogged both sides, the controversial call by the referee (Andre El Haddad of Lebanon) in the second half on several decisions must had fumed a lot of folks back here with two dubious penalty decisions that eventually paved the way to an unglamorous win for the hosts. But the defeat came with a heavy price with 'keeper Izwan Mahbud twisted his left ankle and several yellow card decisions accumulated in the process. It's definitely not a good start to the campaign, but not at the expenses of having a biased official calling all the shots! Speaking at the post-match press conference, Coach Raddy Avramovic said “I would like to thank all my players for putting in a great effort. We started and played well in the first half and could have scored more