Youth Olympic Football: Why so angry with the little Cubs?

By Jan Lin/Red Sports

So you are upset the Cubs lost.

Yes you are upset and there’s nothing wrong with that. Sure, it wasn’t the boys’ best performance, and what is worse about last night’s lacklustre showing is that it gave permission to the enemy to invade our soil and turn it into a play(acting) ground.

However, may I suggest that the pent-up anger of most football fans in Singapore is rooted in the disappearance of that once-upon-a-time tangible sense of national pride in football? But why should a group of talented 15-year-olds bear those grievances?

What were you doing when you were 15?

To put things in perspective, not only the Cubs, but many of Singapore’s Youth Olympic Games (YOG) representatives are full-time students enrolled in our local schools. Many of them will sit for exams after this.

Before the Games, the first half of their 2010 was spent training and preparing for the annual inter-schools competitions on top of national trainings. While their peers soaked up the June break, training did not cease for these national flagbearers.

Then when curtains for the Games fall next week, and life goes back to normalcy for us, guess what? The boys have to polish off eight months of academic lessons to sit for the same final year exam along with the rest of their schoolmates in October.

Even the kids in the Sports School receive minimum privileges simply because time does not and will not stop for the kids to catch up on their school work. Life has gone on for many while those involved in the inaugural Games play catch up.

The beauty of hosting a multi-sport Games is in unraveling sporting talents that the nation may be oblivious to or may have overlooked in the midst of a highly pragmatic society that glorifies the rat race and paper-chase. Hence, foreign sports talents.

It is never nice to lose at home, but what is winning or losing when it has taken a group of 15-year-olds, who just want to play ball, to have also brought the nation together for a common cause? This has made hosting the Games worthwhile.

Why are we so quick to tear down what is but raw beginnings of a generation of youthful sporting talents? Are we not shooting ourselves in the foot when we cry foul against foreign talents but yet remain hostile and critical towards our own?

Talent development takes time, strategy and above all, impeccable support from various stakeholders and pillars of the society – the government, family, schools, media and especially the general public whose views shapes one’s self-concept.

If at 15, you are able to say with zeal, ‘It really doesn’t matter what others think of me’, you are either emotionally well beyond your years (perhaps owing to exceptional parenting) or quite simply, you are lying or hiding behind a façade.

Kids, and yes, even adults, crave permission and learn most through observation.

We can be bitter about the Haitian kids playacting antics in last night’s game but again it is just as hypocritical to judge their behavior when millions across the world hero-worship the adults who do it every week and the media loves them.

Why are we not angry about the ‘example’ these adults are setting?

In the same way, our Cubs are observing and are aware of the expectations and reactions pre- and post-game. Some have pointed to the media’s hype as a cause of the Cubs’ loss. Well then, all the better. Learn from it.

The earlier kids are exposed to the ‘real world’ and be equipped for it, the better the chance they stand as adults to handle these demands and become successful coping with them independently instead of being beaten by what others think.

Perhaps it’s against the Asian parenting psyche, but the sooner we release our Cubs to the wild and teach them how to survive instead of protecting them, the earlier we are allowing the Lion in them to rise up and soon, roar.