13 minutes and 27 seconds in. New boy Rui Pires holds, and then sprints forward to intercept a loose pass. Within seconds, the ball is worked out right to Maxime. Richairo makes a convincing decoy run into the middle, pushing the defensive line back. Then comes the crucial moment – Shawal raises his left hand to get Maxime’s attention, and then darts behind Pedro Porro. The cross comes and it’s as we expect, a brilliant ball from our Belgian wizard – all it needs is a finish. Shawal, with the deftest of touches, lifts it over the despairing Guglielmo Vicario. As it bounces in, the fans begin to cheer. It is 1-0, improbably, against one of the best teams in the English Premier League.
A moment like this, some people wait a lifetime, for a moment like this. For some reason when I was rewatching the game at home on MeWatch, this Kelly Clarkson song just came into my head when I saw Shawal score. Scoring a goal is always nice and great, but scoring against Spurs to put your team 1-0 up in the National Stadium? That’s gotta be a highlight for him, and so it was – he said in his post-match interview with TNP that it was a happy feeling for him and it was “one of the best moments for [him] in his career to score against a big team like this“.
This moment, and what came after felt so great, partly because Spurs started the game with a strong lineup. Let’s examine how strong their lineup was, and also talk about some other things
A Strong Spurs Starting Lineup
This may have been affected by their Bangkok friendly being cancelled, which meant that Spurs manager Ange Postecoglou had to use this match to give match fitness to his stars. I was a little shocked to see the starting lineup. It was basically a lineup that you would expect to see in a Premier League game.
In fact, when I saw the front four of Kane, Son, Maddison and Kulusevski, I feared the worst. Between them, they have amassed 434 Premier League goals and many other assists.
In midfield, they had Bissouma and Sarr, collectively signed for upwards of 50m pounds, and appearing 183 times in the Premier League between them.
In defence, they had Cristian Romero, the World Cup winner who takes a no-nonsense approach to the game. They also had Ben Davies, the Welsh fullback cum centreback who is closing in on 400 appearances in the Premier League.
And then in goal, Vicario, the 17m pound new signing from Italy. Wherever you looked, there was quality on display. This was after all a team that completely dominated West Ham barely a week ago, despite losing it 3-2.
Facing the fearsome Spurs attack was a new-look backline which did give me a bit of optimism. Bailey Wright was flanked by Pedro Henrique and Super. It had been a while since we last saw Pedro in action after his unfortunate season-ending injury last year, while we have not seen Super in action ever since Bailey joined the club. With Mamat and Chris van Huizen on the outside of the back three, and Zharfan behind them we knew the whole defensive unit would be in for a tough time.
But boy, did they make us proud.
It took a top Premier League team using their first team, 47 minutes and the award of a penalty kick to open the scoring against the Lion City Sailors – let that sink in. We can be very very proud of what the boys did because of the strength of the Spurs side that we faced. Yes, they may be in preseason, yes it may just be a friendly, but these are players who are looking to impress a new manager. They cared about the result, and they cared about how they played – do not be taken in by some Spurs fans who try to tell you otherwise. Kane’s reaction after he scored was telling – he was almost embarrassed to celebrate. The lineup that started should comfortably have been 2 or 3 goals ahead.
A Platform to Impress
In the preview article, I mentioned that while this is just a friendly game, this is a chance to impress for the players, and also for the fans. Realistically, when I said it’s a chance to impress, I do not mean that the players will get snapped up by Spurs or any of their rivals watching. What I meant is more that the players and fans have some convincing to do when it comes to attracting locals to the games.
Pre-game, when we spoke to Spurs fans, most of them felt that this would be an easy game. I don’t blame them – I myself was probably a little scared that we would see a very lopsided scoreline, which would give a lot of ammunition for haters of local football. There were predictions of 5-0, 6-0, 10-0, and even 7-2 (from an SPL fan). Someone from the Spurs Supporters Club even condescendingly said to us pre-match that “tonight, you guys will experience the thrashing of your lives“. Maybe he thought it was banter, but I felt it was a tad disrespectful and abit strange even.
I mean, Spurs players earn in one month what some of our players do not even earn in one year. The expectation IS a thrashing. Anything less than a thrashing would be strange, so to brag about it felt a bit weird to me. If you’re still trying to do some mental sums, let me help you out with this table below showing the weekly wages of some of the reserves, not even first-teamers like Kane and Son and Perisic. The figure in grey is their annual salary, while the column right next to that shows their weekly salary.
So, Pape Sarr, who started in midfield earns 80,000 pounds a month, equivalent to about S$136,600. If you divide that by 12, you get close to S$12,000 per month. Most of our players are not on that I dare say.
And then we talk about the fans. Some of the Crew was interviewed by Mothership, and I thought they did well to answer the questions eloquently and authentically – see for yourselves below.
There was also a chance for those in the stadium to see that the Crew did really well to try to bring an atmosphere to the game. The drumming and singing was almost non-stop, and people seated near the middle of the stadium, and in the upper tiers remarked that they could hear the Crew very clearly. Considering the way smaller numbers that the Crew possess, this was a real achievement for us.
The hope of course is that neutrals who saw that the Crew was in good voice and had a lot of fun, will now decide to come down for a game or two, to give the SPL a chance.
Post-match, there were 500 more followers on Instagram for the Sailors, while The Crew’s official account saw a rise of about 6% in their follower numbers. SailorFanTalk also received a significant number of followers after the game. We hope that this interest doesn’t die down after a while – and for us to avoid that fate, it requires all stakeholders to contribute.
The team need to continue delivering on the pitch, as they did in the first half. The fans need to keep the atmosphere going. There needs to be constant outreach building on from this, not just from the club, but from the fans as well.
Recently, I had the privilege of speaking on a Straits Times podcast about why Singaporeans choose to support the English Premier League teams instead of supporting their local sides. You can listen to it by clicking below, or using this link.
One of the factors I emphasised was that growing up, a lot of Singaporean children find themselves in this huge bubble created by the mainstream media, their friends and family – and this huge bubble is an EPL bubble. Everywhere you turn, you see EPL and you hear EPL. Your friends wear Arsenal shirts, Manchester United shirts. Those a little older will remember that The New Paper used to draw graphics of the weekend’s action. The younger ones will know that on TikTok and Instagram, there are thousands of content creators talking about the EPL, breaking down the latest matches, designing nice posters. It is impossible to escape this bubble.
By contrast, the SPL bubble is incredibly easy to escape. A combination of less marketing resources for the clubs and the league, fewer content creators, and the mainstream media not prioritising local sports has meant that you can go days, weeks, months, even years without hearing about the SPL.
We need to eventually improve on this front, to create a tighter bubble. Let’s use the momentum and start now.
Our Team Moving Forward
So far, I have not really spoken about the most important part of the match, the Sailors players involved. We’ve all watched the game so I think everyone can pick their own stellar performances. Speaking to fans after the game, I think the consensus is this – the most impressive players were Rui Pires, Zharfan Rohaizad, Mamat, and Shawal Anuar. Rui in particular really looked dominant in midfield, as he not just showed silk on the ball, he also showed his steely side, snapping into challenges.
Some people spoke to me about my Preview article and mentioned that there was an inaccuracy. Apologies! Before I tell you what the inaccuracy is, please take a look at the excerpt in question.
This gave the impression that we can only register 6 players for our AFC Champions League squad. This is inaccurate. Thank you for pointing this out to me without issuing a Correction Direction.
We can register as many foreign players as we want, but on the pitch, there can only be 5+1. It is thus likely that you will see Pedro Henrique, Super, Kodai Tanaka and Rui Pires all registered, along with Bailey, Diego, Maxime, and Richairo. In games where we need to be more defensive, such as when we go up against Korean or Japanese giants, then I am pretty sure you will see a similar backline to that against Spurs, where all our foreign defenders start.
This gives us flexibility – we can then choose to start Diego in games where we expect to be the ball-dominant side. It also allows us to weather any injury crisis, given that we have more foreigners that we can count on. It was nice to see Pedro get a good run out, and hopefully Kodai can start getting some minutes in the months to come.
Conclusion
It was a great night out and a night that gave us much optimism ahead of the AFC Champions League campaign. The final result was expected, but the way we got there was perhaps not. I hope our boys can remember that they almost achieved a first half clean sheet against a Premier League first-team , and even took the lead. Let’s all build on this, let’s end the SPL season strong, and then look ahead to the Champions League and create more moments like this.
COME ON YOU SAILORS!
Written by Eddy Hirono
Picture credit: Lion City Sailors
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