Abandoned school venue for street football in Nike Cup

Story by Koh Yizhe/Red Sports. Photos by Lai Jun Wei/Red Sports

Imagine a street football tournament that is free and where teams can play unlimited number of matches. The Nike Cup, which started the past weekend with the central and west zone qualifying rounds, is such a tournament.

The Nike Cup is held worldwide with each country choosing how they want to hold the football competition. While other countries like Spain and England chose to have a regular 11-a-side tournament, the Nike Cup in Singapore recreates the freestyle futsal football that can be found in neighbourhoods around Singapore.

Registration is free and teams of five plus one reserve pit their skills against each other in a five-minute match. The first team to score a goal wins the match and continue to play on court with the next opponent. If there is a draw after the five minutes, both teams make way for two other teams. Draws and loses do not count for anything while a win grants teams a point. Teams play as many games as possibly in the allocated playing time to accumulate wins.

Unlike other tournaments where teams only play a couple of games in a knockout format, the Nike Cup encourages teams to play as much football as possible. Even if a team loses, they can still continue playing to notch as many wins as possible.

“It is a fun tournament,” said Chan Wei En of a team named Causeway Bay. “You can keep on playing even though you lose. So it doesn’t really matter if you win or lose. I definitely hope there will be more such tournaments in the future.”

The island-wide tournament is separated into four zones — north, east, west and central. Teams are split into two categories – junior and senior. Participants aged 14-16 years-old play in the junior division while those aged 17-19 years old play in the senior division. The top 25 teams from each category and each zone with the most points go on to the Grand Finals on July 4th 2010.

The winning team from the senior division gets a one week all-expenses-paid football experience at Brazil national team’s training ground while teams from the junior category are playing for a special training experience with the Singapore national team and $8000 worth of Nike prizes.

“We heard about this tournament over the radio and thought it would be a good opportunity to meet old friends,” said Vinson Phua, captain of Chong FC. “We were all from the same secondary school and wanted to just meet up and play since we have all moved on to different polytechnics. It offers exciting football and heart-pumping action and it is very different from the normal knockout kind of tournament.”

The former students of First Toa Payoh Secondary School won seven straight matches to give them a good chance of making it to the final. Another great part of the unique format of the tournament allows for teams to leave whenever they want if they feel they have played enough football.

“We don’t really have to stay anymore as we have a good chance of making it through,” added Vinson. “It was really tiring — playing seven games straight in the hot sun. One of our player is not feeling well so we’ll take a break and see how it goes.”

To illustrate how football can be played anywhere, the different zone qualifications are played in the heartlands, the middle of Orchard Road and even an abandoned school. Teams are also allowed to sign up for as many qualifying zones as they like.

“The atmosphere here is good,” said Draga 10’s Mohamed Yaeub of the west zone qualifying location which is at the former Townsville Institution at Margaret Drive. “It is very different from other tournaments.”

“I don’t really like the city and I prefer this venue,” added Yaeub, whose team also participated in the central zone qualification at *SCAPE Youth Park the day before. “We might also go to Sembawang to play next week as well.”

The prize that is on offered for the winner of the Nike Cup is a all-expense-paid trip to Brazil to experience football in that country.

“Shiok!” said Mohamad Sufyan Itatta. “It would be a dream come through if that happens!”

Registration for the north and east zones will be open till the qualifying day. For the north zone, it will be played at Sembawang Concrete Space at Sembawang MRT. For the east zone, Tampines Central Park will be the location.

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