Majulah!

The moment I reached home, I turned on the telly and was terharu at what I was seeing. The scoreline read Singapore 2 Lebanon 0 and it was merely the first half at that time. My first reaction was WOW. Obviously I was happy. In fact if not for tuition, I probably wanted to catch it live. But before I tried to jump into any further conclusions, I wanted to make a second inspection of the match and in particularly the team. These are some of my findings.

1) The new red Nike jersey looked nicer than expected, albeit damn tight fitting. You could see almost every rippling muscle movements through that thin red cloth. Nipples, veins, arteries, small intestine semua boleh Nampak. The sheer ketatness of the top actually made the Lions look more formidable than ever.

2) On the other hand, the Lebanese jersey was big, airy and its sleeves were almost ¾ style. Which made perfect sense because their badan semua mampat kebab punye. If they had worn a tight fit, it would probably bust their guts and the Lions would simply lick at the prospect of a fallen prey.

3) My favourite player of all time as well as Nas’s, Fazrul Nawaz actually started the game. And he actually scored! It was all too good to be true and the highlight reels proved that I was right. He missed a sitter in front of an empty goal and his goal came from a weak shot that took a fortuitous deflection which fooled the keeper. Tak boleh ang sehh.

4) While the game was played at the National Stadium, Singapore played like the away side for most of the match. The ball was constantly with the opposition and Singapore was guilty of giving away the ball cheaply time and time again. As a footballing side, they definitely fall short of the mark. The ball was always going long into the channels and they never really dictated the tempo of the game. The players were soild and very disciplined defensively but going forward, they just need that belief and confidence to hold the ball longer, play it in neat triangles and wait for that one killer pass instead of just punting aimless balls forward and hoping for the best.

5) Referee KAYU! Referee KAYU! Lebanon should have been given 2 clear penalties towards the end of the first half after blatant tackles from Bennett and Precious. On both occasions, I was just waiting for him to point to the spot but he really decided to be with the home team. And I swear that there was this foul throw so bad you would have thought it was AFL but again, the ref chose to ignore. Lastly, he booked Lionel Lewis for time wasting HALF A FIELD apart. That was the slackest refereeing act I’ve seen. He was in the other half of the field and nonchalantly took out the card and booked Lewis. I’m not sure Lewis even noticed it.

6) Singapore could have and should have scored a lot a lot more. They missed at least 4 gilt-edged chances in front of goal. Having said that, they always looked threatening on the break.

7) I concede that Shi Jiayi is a very good player with good feet and vision. I would rather him or Shahril Ishak pair Mustafic in the middle instead of John Wilkinson. He is a bit too English and direct for me. And please please play Khairul Amri and chuck Fazrul and Ridhuan to one side. Nas would staunchly agree with me in this one.

8) I didn’t know I can write about the Singapore team this much. Standard macam faham je.