I may be showing my age a little with this introduction to the article, but when I was looking at the standings and playing out all the permutations in my mind, the song “Any Dream Will Do” kept popping into my head, except it was “Any Draw Will Do”. It’s a song that’s been covered by numerous artistes, and made the subject of parodies as well. When writing, you shouldn’t sidetrack yourself right from the get-go in the first paragraph, but this is not my day job, so who cares.
Do check out the song as performed in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, the musical, and then also the hilarious Chelsea and Jose Mourinho inspired parody, harking back to the early days when Jose Mourinho first took charge of Chelsea and bought tons of players due to the funds made available by Roman Abramovich, forever changing the landscape of English football, and dare I say, all football.
Back to the point – I genuinely believe that a draw will allow us to qualify for the knock-out stages because I have confidence in Port FC to beat Persib Bandung in Thailand. And if that happens, an away draw at Zhejiang will take us through to the next stage. But that’s just my conclusion, let’s dive right into some of the other thoughts I have coming into this game.
Stakes are High – for BOTH Teams
After the madness of the last 10 minutes in Jalan Besar Stadium when we somehow fucked up a 2-0 lead to lose 3-2 (not even a draw, not even a draw, ARGHHHHHHHHHHHH), the group has been blown wide open. Zhejiang, despite losing 3 of their 4 games so far, find themselves in a position where they can still qualify. And it’s not even a fanciful possibility. Simply put, they just have to beat us, then beat Persib next week. After that, hope that we don’t take all 3 points against Port FC at Jalan Besar Stadium. Take a look for yourself how this might all pan out.

For us, this represents a chance to make it to the knockout stages, to prolong our continental adventure. Truthfully though, the stakes might be even higher for Zhejiang. Why?
In the SPL, barring a crazy collapse, we are guaranteed entry into next year’s ACL2 tournament. However, the Chinese Super League has already concluded and Zhejiang is in 7th, nowhere near the continental qualification spots. This is very much the last-chance saloon for them – they need to win to progress, and then try their best to win the whole damn tournament so they qualify for the ACL Elite.
Failure to pick up a win here will extinguish their chances of making it to the next round, and with it, any continental competition next season.
There’s also the question of pride, given how both us and Zhejiang lost our previous ACL2 game … being at home, they will want to show their thousands of fans that they are capable of bringing some cheer to what has been a difficult season for them.
Chomping at the Bit Till It’s Gone
Both teams will be chomping at the bit, eager to get going again after the last defeat. However, it has been quite a while since both teams have played. There have been no official matches since 3 weeks ago. If the teams were horses chomping at the bit, the bit would probably be gone by now.

I include a picture of a horse and its “bit” so that you can see how the phrase originated. Of course in this case, I am not so sure I’d be sending my kids to Shane English School considering that they wrote “it it mouth” in their advert. Shane English School, more like Shame English School.
Back to the point. Usually when you lose a game, you’d want to hop right back into action, to put things right. You’d ideally want a game against Tanjong Pagar United 5 days later – stick on the first team, let them rack up a 5-0 scoreline by the 60th minute, then put on some of your reserves to finish the game.
However, there was none of that for us as we didn’t have any league games. We did have a morale-boosting friendly against JDT where we lost 1-0 but by all accounts looked pretty solid. It was also good that players like Bill Mahmadou got gametime and impressed. The rest of our Singapore NT players had abit of a mixed bag of results, beating Myanmar unconvincingly 3-2, but then losing to Chinese Taipei.
How will this lack of rhythm affect us? Will our players have been dwelling on this result? I can’t say for sure, but I guess that at least in the international fixtures, Shawal kept up his impressive form, finding the net twice in 2 games. He’s definitely one to look out for.
Who Else To Look Out For?
Besides our superstar Shawal, I think what deserves a mention is that Bart Ramselaar should be back from suspension. You’ll remember his red card against Persib. That was 2 games ago, and I am reliably informed that he will be involved in this game.
We’ve not seen any other news of any other absentees – plus we’ve seen all our players in action in training videos and airport videos and the like, so we can only assume that the full squad is fit and raring to go.
On the Zhejiang side, it’s very much the same team that we saw against us at Jalan Besar Stadium, and I just hope that we do abit better closing down Li Tixiang. Often, he was given too much time in my opinion to pick out a pass, and his cultured left foot is capable of some really good deliveries. The first time we met Zhejiang, he created a few chances which required Izwan to be at his best to preserve the clean sheet.
Their wingers of course, will have to be shackled well, as the pair of Jean Kouassi and Deabeas are full of pace and trickery. If we can nullify Zhejiang’s wide threats, we will give ourselves a real chance of coming away with a draw.
Conclusion
Aside from the great win against Port FC, our away record in continental competition isn’t great. You just need to take a look at how we did in the Shopee Cup against Cong An Ha Noi and Borneo FC. Last season’s loss to Jeonbuk in the Jeonju World Cup Stadium also comes to mind. Against a team in green, in temperatures below 10 degrees celsius, our boys will be the underdogs.
It isn’t lost on me that while we played well against Zhejiang in the first game, we needed Izwan to be sharp on a few occasions, while our goals can be classified as “wondergoals”.
Can we reach deep into our reserves and find the spirit and quality to give us the win or draw we need? Let’s hope so.
COME ON YOU BOYS IN BLUE!
My predicted line-up
Izwan Mahbud
Hami Syahin, Lionel Tan, Bailey Wright, Toni Datkovic, Chris van Huizen
Song Ui-Young, Rui Pires
Maxime Lestienne, Lennart Thy, Bart Ramselaar
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: Zhejiang 1 Sailors 1
Joseph’s prediction: Zhejiang 2 Sailors 2

Written by Eddy Hirono
If you’d like to support the work we do here at SailorFanTalk, you may want to visit https://ko-fi.com/sailorfantalk and leave us a tip!