The S.League Football Championship is in its final stretch and the Singapore Armed Forces Football Club is sitting top of the league, 11 points ahead of second-place Tampines Rovers FC who have played one less game.
SAFFC will win their fourth title in a row if they don’t collapse in the last seven games of the season.
Question is: Do you care?
Football attracts broadly two kinds of fans – purists and bettors.
Purists are fans who just watch to enjoy the game, support their favourite clubs and talk about it with friends. They don’t bet on games.
Then, there are the bettors. They watch because they have money riding on the game. Those are the guys lining up to place their (legal) bets at the Singapore Pools outlets.
Singapore Pools funding keeps the S.League running. Television coverage of the S.League is also funded by Singapore Pools.
So it seems reasonable to assume the S.League has quite a bit of followers who are primarily punters.
Looking at the response we’ve had to S.League stories on Red Sports, our guess is that the number of folks who watch the S.League purely for entertainment sake is low.
REDpoll
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S League needs to increase their players’ salaries. We need to put more value into the sport. Parents will then possibly consider their sport-oriented/talented son for a sport career. It’s ridiculous that everyone has to become engineers. If you want Singapore to progress and be respected by other nations, it needs to put value in art, sports and entertainment. Come on Singapore! You’re a great nation with so much potential to beat the rest!
Also, good looking soccer players would help too… everybody wants to watch good looking people on tv. So it’s not a bad idea if this rule applies to sport right?
Everytime I read a debate on this issue, it makes me nolstalgic and miss the Malaysia Cup a little more, which was the league I grew up watching even before there was the BPL aired on cable TV… : (
At the same time, I guess I’ve reached a place within myself that there is no point being critical about this issue because any arguments for “Singaporean should support local football instead of BPL” do not really make sense as truth of the matter is, man is not made for football’s sake, football is made for man to enjoy.
It becomes quite a hypocritical argument if one supports the local football league yet pay more attention to hollywood than the local music, arts and film industry, or even not using ‘local products’. (Would/must you choose a Creative product over an Apple product?)
We each have one life to live and this life is bound by this thing called time – If you have only 2 hours each week to spare for watching sports, you’d intrinsically choose to invest your time (and/or money) in the source of entertainment/experience with ‘maximum returns’.
Asian/Asean league or not, Asian football is just not as enjoyable as European football, so its not a ‘personal’ issue with Singapore. Spectators may tune in to watch Asian/Asean league for ‘nationalistic’ purpose but it would realistically still be less enjoyable than European football.
The question is what has made European football so enjoyable?
Yet others will argue that watching football is a total waste of time – Its perspective – If one sees supporting the local league as a ‘noble’ cause, by all means do it, but its not to be imposed on everyone. Nobody can be faulted or made guilty for not enjoying it.
The true measure of nobility is in whether a person would still do it if the returns are low or none, and if nobody notices or cares.
@YZ, marissab is probably referring to those newspapers which are actually PAID to cover the S League. Chortle.
@marissab – Hogging?! If anything there isn’t effort coverage of Singapore’s only professional league. And this might be the reason why there isn’t support for the S.League.
Ok fine, I’ll admit. There is nothing more boring in sport then a goalless draw in the S.League, but there are plenty of exciting matches as well. Take for example, Tampines vs SAFFC. Noh Alam Shah don’t seem to be able to stay on the pitch whenever these two teams meet.
Just compare the coverage of BPL and other global sporting events to the S.League!
No. And I wish they would stop hogging the sports pages. I want to read about local athletes, who actually perform and show results. Not them
I totally agree that the league would be a whole lot more interesting if it was a regional asean league and there are several reasons for me saying so.
firstly, i feel that it’s hard to really pledge one’s allegiance to a single club side in singapore. unlike top european sides where one may be born in the city of london and hence have a strong connection to a london club, we singaporeans can’t really do that because we’ve got close to a dozen clubs cramped into a small country. there just isn’t that ‘this-is-my-club’ feeling around the area.
i think the prospect of a regional asean league is great. we can just look to the AFF championship, sultan of selangor cup etc to get a rough gauge of its impact. by having lesser sides but having them participating in a ‘bigger’ league, we are creating a bigger fanbase for each individual club. because of our small size, we are much like a ‘London’ in the whole of England. the support that Brunei DPMM receives at its home games is also a strong indication of the kind of effect we can expect. they got a crowd of close to 10k for a game against saffc and i think alot of that is down to ‘natioanl rivalry’.
all in all, i favour the idea of a regional asean league involving the top sides of the region. not so much of a ‘champions league’ idea, but rather a seasonal league consisting of perhaps 18-20 club sides playing each other twice just like the BPL.
I am a supporter of SAFFC. Was very proud of the team when they qualified for the ACL and playing with the big boys like Kashima, Suwon and Shanghai. And now they are gunning for the 4th consecutive title.
I brought my friend who came in from the States to watch
SAFFC-Home Utd game. He is a big soccer fan(rare for an American) and he enjoyed the game as much though SAF lost 2-0. He asked me is this the normal attendance for the games played here, and sadly I told him NO.
I told him majority of soccer fans here watches foreign soccer rather than the local as many compares the standard and quality of football played. He was shock in a way and he also agreed that in America, many watches top leagues in Europe but whenever the home team plays, people also support their local team. And he says the Major League in America is high but not great but got better when Beckham came to hype up the league.
I am a strong supporter of Arsenal, but also of SAFFC. I will never compare the standard of how Arsenal play to that of SAFFC. But its just that if we, the local Sporeans do not support the local league, then who will. Yes, some of the clubs will have to raise the standard of play esp the lower tier team like Balestier, Sengkang,Woodlands. If we can get 6 -7 really strong sides like the standard of SAFFC,Tampines,Home Utd and 2-3 foreign teams that can challedge the top 3-4, I believe the standard will be raised. Supre Reds has been a great example of typical quick football, a pleasure to watch and so has Albirex,albeit a young team and DPMM has shown they can play gd football,discipline aside. But I believe $$$$ plays a big role too. If FAS can give clubs bigger budget to work on players, maybe clubs can sign better, interesting players to hype up the league. FAS has to also play a major role in terms of publicity for the league as of it is now, its pretty abysmal.
Its all a chain reaction really. Think abt it.
More $$$ —> Better foreign players—> increase quality of play
—>attracts crowd—>more mileage for sponsors—-> new sponsors will come in—>upgrade facilities(pitches, stands,std)—> back to FAS
Aint rocket science.
i just wished that the S league can be as exciting in terms of the title race since we have no relegation dogfights to be worried about. if maybe the big teams like SAF, Tampines and Home United can be very competitive and maybe an occasional underdog story like last season in the form of the Korean super reds, i think a lot more will sit up and take notice (:
@alif.: The Super Reds and Brunei DPMM are good editions. The league would be more interesting if it was a regional asean league.