August 16, 2023

This article should really have come out earlier but WordPress will be the death of me. Usually reliable, it decided to crash while I was 99% done with the article and typing my concluding thoughts. How very annoying – and so I have to start all over again. (Yes, I did save along the way, but even the backups are gone – what a tragedy.) It’s not often that someone can get 2 goals and 3 assists in the game and yet not be the focus of an article, but that’s exactly what will happen to Maxime Lestienne in this article. I will still of course, touch a little on Maxime first before talking about Richairo and the rest, so let’s go. The New Normal Yikes. Guess it has been a while since you saw that dreaded phrase. At first, when it was used during the Covid-19 period and I first heard it, I thought to myself, “well isn’t that such a succinct and elegant way to describe the pandemic!” But after a while, when everyone around you and in the supermarket and in the coffeeshop started saying “new normal” and even the mynahs cooing sounded like they were cooing “new normal”, it got a little tiresome and I wanted to puke whenever I heard it. What has this got to do with Lestienne? I think we are spoiled, haha. Lestienne is now on 25 goals and 21 assists this season and that’s just…insane. It’s calculator time again, so that’s 46 goal contributions in 23 games, making it 2 goal contributions a game. Just madness. It’s the 8th time this season that he has recorded both a goal and an assist in the same game. For him, impressive feats are “normal”. And that probably explains why even on a day when he got 2 goals and 3 assists, my mind was dominated by Richairo, who himself picked up 2 goals and 1 assist. Long may this “new normal” last. LCS, please put a damn contract in front of him and let him sign it! Richairo = Curry No, not the former NBA Most Valuable Player. The more important one. You know how when you eat Nasi Padang or Caifan, what is important is whether the rice is cooked well, whether the vegetables are fresh and nice, and whether the meats selected are tender. But to really elevate the dish, you need a good curry on top of it. It’s why you flirt with the Nasi Padang makcik, it’s why you tell the Caifan Uncle that his new watch very bright ah, Uncle, you strike TOTO is it Uncle? All you want is for them to smile to themselves and then just put 2 seconds more worth of curry onto your plate. Then you can bring it back to your seat and just whack and savour the curry as it makes every component of your dish taste better. Yes? Yup, Richairo Zivkovic is the curry. You won’t die if you don’t have it – your nasi padang is still nasi padang, your caifan is still caifan. There’s still a bit of gravy in those other dishes, your beansprouts, your sweet and sour chicken. There’s still gravy – the dish still works. In football terms, your team will still function – your team still works. But Richairo is different gravy, man. Some of you may know that I felt the criticism of Kim Shin-Wook last season was harsh. I felt he drastically improved his goalscoring ratio here as compared to that he achieved in other leagues, and he looked like he was genuinely trying his best. That was last season. This season, we all feel that Abdul Rasaq is doing a great job upfront, and has reached double digits (more on this later). But when you look at Richairo in full flight, it’s really a sight to behold. When he’s down the wings, I can tell you he must be a nightmare to defend. As someone who plays fullback quite a bit, the worst players to mark are those who are fast, can cross with both feet, can win the ball in the air, and can shoot with both feet. He is all of the above. Watch him in games – his left-footed crosses are better than some players’ right-footed crosses even though it is his weak foot. This game alone, both goals he scored with his weak foot, and the first of those goals was an absolute rocket into the top corner. While the team was still doing quite well even before he joined us, since he has joined us, every attack looks that bit more dangerous. Since he has started in the team, the team has achieved a slightly higher goals per game average. Of course, there is a very small sample size involved so please take this stat with a pinch of salt. We spoke with Richairo after the game, and it was funny how he took his own goal with good humour, but also very interesting to see that he was quite impressed with some of the attacking combinations during the game, especially on the counter. He also spoke about how this would be useful in the Champions League if we face good opposition. Check it out for yourself! Abdul Rasaq – Young Lion Is there anything noteworthy about this table of top 10 goalscorers and assisters in our league? You may notice that out of the 20 names here, only 3 are Singaporean – Abdul Rasaq with 10 goals, Joel Chew with 9 assists, and Adam Swandi with 7 assists. This is not the time and place to examine all factors about why this is so, because that would need a long article with tons of input from various sources. We just want to take this opportunity to congratulate Abdul Rasaq on what is a very impressive achievement. He started this season as the no. 2 striker behind Kodai Tanaka, and when given the chance to