November 21, 2023

It’s FAS Awards Night tomorrow, and given that we haven’t had football for a bit, I don’t know about you, but I am quite excited about this. Our Sailors have been nominated for a whole bunch of awards, which is unsurprising, given that we have had some really stellar performers, and only just lost out to Albirex in the title race in the SPL, while finishing as champions for the second year in a row in the WPL. Here’s some of my thoughts regarding the awards and who I think should win! AIA Player of the Year Nominees – Maxime Lestienne – Lion City Sailors Seia Kunori – Albirex Niigata (S) Ryoya Taniguchi – Balestier Khalsa These awards tend to favour attacking players, which I always found a little unfair, because defenders are just as important to a team achieving results as its attackers. Perhaps it is simpler to gauge contributions from attackers because there is a measurable end-product – goals and assists. Since the introduction of the Ballon D’or award in 1956, only 3 defenders and 1 goalkeeper have ever won. Franz Beckenbauer in 1972 and 1976, Matthias Sammer in 1996, Fabio Cannavaro in 2006, and Lev Yashin in 1963.  Our local awards nights also suffer from the same problem – of the 27 Player of the Year awards handed out since 1996, only 4 belong to the backline – 3 defenders and 1 goalkeeper. Round of applause for S Subramani in 1998, Daniel Bennett in 2001, Valery Hiek in 2009, and Hassan Sunny in 2014. After all that build-up – perhaps you may ask me which defender in the league I feel deserves a special mention. My answer is actually no one – I don’t think it was a year for defenders at all. Had Tampines kept up their early-season defensive prowess throughout the year, I may have been tempted to suggest one of Milos Zlatkovic or Shuya Yamashita – but they didn’t, so there’s that. Sorry if you feel I wasted your time with a history lesson – old people tings, lol. On to our 3 candidates, let’s quickly look at some of the merits for choosing each player. Given that this is an individual award, I think the above table should show without a doubt that Maxime Lestienne deserves this award. When I was compiling these stats, I could barely believe some of them – I mean I knew he was good, but this good? Wow. I would like to zoom in on the 4th metric I used – goals and assists as a percentage of team’s total goals. This for me is a gauge as to how influential the player has been to his team. It is quite clear that in fact there is a bit of an over-reliance on Maxime, as 58.2% of the goals scored by the Sailors are either scored or assisted by him. This far outstrips his two competitors for the award. I think enough ink has been spilt here – if he doesn’t win the award, we riot. AIA Young Player of the Year Nominees – Hakeme Yazid – Brunei DPMM FC Seia Kunori – Albirex Niigata (S) Abdul Rasaq Akeem – Lion City Sailors FC Of course, if favouritism were to enter the picture, I’d highlight how extraordinary Abdul Rasaq has been this season. He is the top local goalscorer with 10 goals, and it is impressive how he started the season probably expecting to play limited minutes, but ended up being our frontman for many games once Kodai Tanaka suffered an unfortunate and serious injury. He even saw off the challenge of a foreign signing – Bernie Ibini-Isei, to hold on to the starting striker spot, which is very impressive for someone of his age. However, if we were to give the three players the same statistical treatment that we did above, the case for Abdul Rasaq becomes less compelling. Seia Kunori dominates with his sheer number of goals and assists. He has also won the title, while Hakeme Yazid’s team finished in 7th place, and it would seem a bit strange to give Young Player of the Year to a player from a team that largely struggled. Of course, bear in mind that Hakeme Yazid did all this without the benefit of home advantage all season, and the stats below do show that his team relied heavily on him, as he contributed to almost half of the goals scored by DPMM. While the stats also do show Abdul Rasaq having a very impressive conversion rate, I think there is no doubt that everything points towards Seia Kunori picking up the Young Player of the Year award. Polar Mineral Water Coach of the Year Nominees – Kazuaki Yoshinaga – Albirex Niigata (S) Peter De Roo – Balestier Khalsa Gavin Lee – Tampines Can’t bring myself to care much about this – but I’d like to see Peter de Roo get it for Balestier punching above their weight and playing swashbuckling attacking football all year. Win, lose or draw, a game featuring Balestier Khalsa was always exciting. Oh wait maybe just win or lose – Balestier didn’t draw a game all season. 12 wins and 12 losses. Alexa, play “All or Nothing” by O-Town. Sidenote – if Yoshinaga wins it, he will be the first coach to win this award 4 times, going ahead of Richard Bok and Vorawan Chitavanich. Select Goal of the Year Winner – Khairul Amri vs Hougang United (6 April 2023) Strangely, last year’s awards ceremony had 3 nominees for Goal of the Year but this year it seems from the press release that this Khairul Amri goal has already been selected as Goal of the Year. Not that it’s not a deserving winner, it’s a brilliant goal from the legendary Khairul Amri. Mid-air, cross played behind him, he manages to jump up and contort his body to land a ferocious scissor-kick volley that gave the keeper no chance. It was a brilliant goal