February 2026

Photo Credit: Lion City Sailors FC Glory doesn’t always guarantee affection. After two and a half trophy-laden years, Aleksandar Rankovic has left the Lion City Sailors. The most decorated coach in the club’s short history, “Ranko” delivered a Singapore Premier League (SPL) title, three Singapore Cups, on top of a fairytale run to the final of the 2024/25 AFC Champions League Two. Despite his successes, the Serbian coach’s departure has come amid growing discontent. Sacked one day after a disappointing 2-0 loss to Cambodian champions Svay Rieng FC, it has been a miserable campaign for LCS in continental competitions, who have been dumped out at the group stage in both the ACL2 as well as the Shopee Cup. Undoubtedly though, Ranko does deserve our gratitude for his role in our development of the club, and Singapore football in general. In this article, I try to put some context to Ranko’s tenure, his tactics, and where the club must go from here. Ranko-who? For many Sailors fans (myself included), Rankovic’s appointment in June 2023 was met more with puzzled curiosity than genuine excitement. After all, I don’t imagine too many football fans, not least Singaporean ones, would be familiar with a man whose CV featured a brief stint as head coach of Eredivisie side ADO Den Haag, and a smattering of assistant positions at other Dutch clubs.  In his first words after being appointed head coach, Rankovic highlighted his preferred style of dominating possession and playing attacking football, not surprising considering his background in Dutch football. Curiously though, Sailors technical director Luka Lalic described Rankovic’s style as being “pragmatic and straightforward”. Sailors fans would soon understand the contradiction. Ever since privatisation in 2020, LCS have always been labelled as the “Manchester City” of Singapore, due to immense financial resources that dwarfs our  domestic opponents. The club flexed its fiscal muscles to bring big-name attacking players such as Diego Lopes, Maxime Lestienne, Kim Shin-wook and Richairo Zivkovic to the SPL, a calibre of players that was almost unseen previously in our domestic league.  However, similar to what his predecessors Kim Do-hoon, Lalic and Risto Vidakovic experienced, having these quality attackers did not make it easy to produce silky attacking football that fans had come to expect and demand. Teams in the SPL started playing ultra-defensively against LCS, frequently retreating into a tight low block to limit opportunities, relying on counter-attacking opportunities to try and nick a result. On the other hand, the continental opposition posed an even bigger challenge. With the level of opponents simply being much higher than in domestic games, the Sailors simply could not keep up with regional competitors.  Very soon, the problem statement for any LCS head coach became clear: “How do you build a team that can regularly unpick tight, low-block defences in the SPL, yet be able to adapt in the Champions League, where better teams would force us to do a lot more defending?” Pragmatic solutions To understand Rankovic, we have to first understand the environment he inherited. Joining midway through the 2023 season, 2024-25 marked Ranko’s first full season in charge.That year, LCS started in a standard 4-2-3-1 shape. (Line-up against Tampines Rovers, 18 July 2024)  With this shape, LCS started by winning six out of seven games in the SPL. Yet, the victories often felt laborious. Fans got the feeling that we were over-reliant on individual brilliance in attack, yet somehow vulnerable defensively. The fears were not unfounded, as the Sailors were then brutally thrashed 5-0 by Gavin Lee’s Tampines Rovers in the league. The weaknesses were clear to see. At the back, Toni and Bailey are great penalty-box defenders but are not blessed with great pace. They were frequently exposed to pacy forwards running into the channels, having to cover large distances, especially when the fullbacks pushed forward to attack. Attacking-wise, it was also difficult to progress the ball through midfield, as Hariss and Anu are not natural, line-breaking creative passers. The quality of our attackers meant that we could get by against weaker teams, but there were major weaknesses that could be exposed even by our domestic rivals, let alone against continental opposition. Hence, Ranko and the rest of the technical staff were forced to find a pragmatic solution to address the team’s flaws.  (Line-up against Port FC, 5 December 2024)  LCS shifted the approach and started to play with three centrebacks, retreating into a compact, low block without the ball. This made our defence extremely solid, minimizing the ground that each defender had to cover.  Down the wings, we maintained a numerical advantage on opposition wingers (e.g. an opponent’s left winger would be confronted by Hami + Lionel) without losing stability in the penalty box, which remained defended by Bailey and Toni. In the middle, Pires and Song offered good energy, with the centrebacks stepping up frequently to confront attackers receiving the ball between the lines.  Lastly, big credit also has to go to our star attackers Bart and Maxime, who had to fulfil significant defensive workloads to help maintain structural compactness for the team. (Observe how Max and Bart have dropped deep into the defensive shape, allowing Pires/Song to close down aggressively in midfield.  Also note Lionel’s body shape, preparing to jump onto the attacker with space in front of him)  In possession, the formation morphed into a 3-2-4-1, with Hami inverting from right back into central midfield, allowing Song to push forward in attack. With Hami’s distribution proving to be proficient, together with the smooth operator that is Rui Pires, the Sailors had a midfield conduit which could move the ball around the pitch confidently. In fact, I would say that one of Ranko’s biggest tactical successes was to repurpose Hami into one of the league’s most unique inverted fullbacks. There are two key reasons why this approach worked a treat, solving the Sailor’s structural weaknesses. Firstly, the midfield “box” of  Hami/Pires/Song/Bart possessed great technical qualities, allowing us to play quick combinations through the middle and work the