Of all the clubs in the league, I find the fiercest rivalry is with Tampines Rovers. Albirex Niigata (S) is of course the standard-bearer when it comes to quality, and they are perennial title contenders, so many would assume that our rivalry would be the fiercest – but it really isn’t, and there are a few reasons for that.
- The Japanese people are just so darn polite – how do you create a fierce rivalry and get a bit of spice when their fans don’t really boo your players, their players don’t really go mouthing off to the ref after every decision, and their coaching staff don’t come over and pick fights with your coaching staff? Their conduct is just by far the best in the league.
- Albirex benefit from a crazy pipeline of Japanese talent. Singapore football is in the doldrums. Being allowed to fill the starting lineup with tons of Japanese players essentially means that you are fighting against a team with crazy quality. Don’t listen to the people who say that the players are “just” university kids. Japan’s footballing culture is radically different from ours, and a good many professional footballers do opt to go to university to further their football career as well. It’s not exactly the same as the college basketball system in the USA, but if that helps you understand it better, then yes, the Japanese system is in between ours and theirs. Noone in the right sense of mind would call Lebron James before the draft as “just” a university player.
- Tampines Rovers are good at stoking the rivalry, from head to toe. Their social media campaign when it came to the Sailors game earlier this season was about “vengeance”, their chairman in 2019 said that LCS was “playing Championship Manager on a cheat code”, their coaching staff was directly involved in the disciplinary incident that involved Coach Kim Do Hoon, and on the pitch, they have chief shithousery master Yasir Hanapi, who I almost admire for his dedication to riling opposition players and fans up. Even off the pitch, their fans love to chant “F*CK YOU SAILORS”, which is very uncreative and unnecessarily aggressive/crass but hey whatever, The Yellow Knights do a great job at creating an atmosphere. Whether it was accidental or by design, Tampines Rovers at every level have a hate-boner for the Sailors, and that is why I hate them back too – “Cher, he no friend me first!“. Lol, sometimes I can’t believe I am 35 this year. I used to have nothing against Tampines Rovers, but their attitude in recent years has made every encounter have a bit more edge to it, and that’s brilliant. The league needs this.
Enough talk about why the rivalry with Tampines feels fiercer than the rivalry with Albirex. Let’s dive straight into the preview.
Fitness of Boris
Boris Kopentovic has gone off the boil a bit this season – which is amazing considering he has scored 15 goals this season. Of course, close to half of them are penalties (6), but it’s his profligacy in front of goal that has truly been amazing this season. You can hear the groans even in the Tampines stands as sections of the crowd audibly turn on him.
That being said – if he is unavailable for this game, it’s still definitely a good thing. He came off injured two games ago and it looked like he had dislocated his shoulder – not a minor injury.
Boris has contributed 3 assists this season as well, but he is much more than just goals and assists. He is a pest who occupies defenders and distracts them from the very many other threats that Tampines Rovers possesses. His physical presence and threat allows Faris Ramli, Joel Chew, Yasir Hanapi to capitalise on opportunities and loose balls around him.
He was on the bench for the last game against Albirex, but an eagle-eyed Tampines fan informed me that he was not wearing his jersey under the bib unlike the rest of the substitutes. He was merely wearing a training top. We’ve seen this before – Diego Lopes for 1 or 2 games last season also had the same situation. This suggests that he might be a little short to start for tonight’s match.
(On a sidenote I don’t really understand this training kit thing. Someone please explain to me why they can’t just wear the jersey to complete the act? I mean obviously the player was picked on the bench to perhaps play some sort of mind games right? Like, keep the opposition coach guessing whether the injured player is well enough to come on for 15-20 minutes at the end. Is one jersey really that difficult to wash? Food for thought)
If Boris doesn’t start this game, then it’s gonna be Taufik Suparno, who has 3 goals all season. He too, seems to have fallen off a cliff in terms of performance.
Defensive Unit Instability
This season, Tampines have passed out the back very well. This is in large part due to the stability offered by their goalkeeper and back three (in attack) being assured on the ball. In the last two games, it has been way below their usual standard, and it’s really quite hard to blame them.
They’ve had to use substitute keeper Ridhuan Bahrudin, and deal with the loss of both Irfan Najeeb and Milos Zlatkovic. That’s a major defensive reshuffle at the back. For this game, Syazwan comes back in goal, while Milos Zlatkovic I think will start. After all, while he was on the bench against Albirex too, he played more than half an hour, which could mean he is fit for this one. Let’s hope he is still a bit ring rusty because his impact on the defence is huge.
In the 13 matches that he started, Tampines conceded 10 goals. (0.77 goals conceded a match)
In the 8 matches after where he did not start, Tampines conceded 13 goals. (1.63 goals conceded a match)
You can see that the rate of concession of goals almost doubles when he is not around. Of course, this is a very rough-and-ready approach that ignores other factors such as game state, and also who else is suspended/injured, but I believe that the huge variation proves the point adequately.
Stakes are High
Big shoutout to my friend Kenneth who pointed out to me that the stakes are very high tonight.
A win keeps us alive with the faintest hope of a title. A draw hands Albirex the title. I have long given up on this, so this isn’t why the stakes are high.
The importance of this game lies in the form of bragging rights and AFC qualification. While there is unlikely to be an AFC Champions League spot next year for the top local team, we should still be aiming for that because at the very least, it will stop Tampines fans bleating on and on about how they are the top local side despite having a much smaller budget.
It’s true, and it deserves to be pointed out, yes. But you know you hear it so often that you start getting sick of people telling you the obvious (that Sailors should be doing much better).
A win for us will leave us 4 points clear with only 2 games to go. A draw will leave us 1 point clear with 2 games to go. Both of these are good results, although we will want to kill off the challenge of Tampines swiftly and decisively.
If Tampines win, then … nope they won’t win.
Conclusion
I believe the injury doubts that plague Tampines Rovers will lead us to a handsome victory. If even their own fans don’t have faith in the team…I believe at the third time of asking this season, we will finally beat them.
COME ON YOU BOYS IN BLUE!
Score Prediction
Joseph and I predict the scores and track our success in a table. Stay tuned to find out who is the prediction king!
3 points for exact scoreline predicted correctly, 2 points for predicting the winner and margin of victory correctly (but not the exact scoreline), and 1 point for predicting the outcome correctly (win, lose or draw).
Eddy’s prediction: TAM 1 LCS 4
Joseph’s prediction: TAM 2 LCS 3
And here’s the leaderboard –
Written by Eddy Hirono
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