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 ball to our most dangerous attackers in their favoured positions.
Secondly, it gave us a solid rest defence, where the distances that each defender had to cover was shortened, and we could quickly counter-press the opponents no matter which area of the pitch we lost the ball. With a solid 3-2 shape at the back, it allowed the left-back van Huizen (later Diogo Costa), to push high into the offensive line, making use of their qualities in the final third.
With an effective system that both amplified the squad’s qualities and covered its weaknesses, we notched several famous results throughout the season. Drawing 1-1 against Sanfrecce Hiroshima at home, beating Sydney FC 2-1 on aggregate, and a hugely competitive performance against Sharjah in the final, despite having a much weaker squad on paper. This also helped Ranko to deliver a long-awaited SPL title while defending the Singapore Cup.
(Max, our most dangerous player, is receiving the ball on his favoured left foot. Also see how the positions of Pires/Hami/Bart/Song ensures a 4v3 in central midfield for control, while maintaining a rest defence that covers the width of the pitch, allowing us to counter-press effectively)
Sky High Expectations
After the highs of the 2024/25 season, there was a growing belief that LCS were ready to take the next big leap forward. The club heeded the call by making a series of statement signings, bringing in Safuwan Baharudin, Ivan Susak, Tsiy Ndenge, and one of the J-League’s most fearsome attackers, Anderson Lopes. Notably, all four were signings that were seen to be directly strengthening the starting XI.
With such reinforcements, the judging criteria for Ranko changed. Going into the 2025-26 season, many fans demanded Ranko move away from the pragmatism that brought success, and deliver a more attractive, front-foot style capable of visually dominating opponents, even regional ones.
Domestically, we have made a flying start in the league and delivered a tremendous performance against a resurgent Tampines to complete a hat-trick of Singapore Cup titles. Unfortunately, results did not reflect performances in the ACL2. We were unable to call upon Lestienne in the double-header against Bangkok United due to injury, where we edged both ties by performance but failed to convert our chances, especially in the away tie. At the True BG Stadium in Bangkok, we created several opportunities and nullified the Thais, but ultimately were undone by a costly individual error from Hariss.
Despite that, we still scored 10 points in the group, level with Bangkok United but still missing out on qualification due to a worse head-to-head record. Ultimately, this was the outcome on which Rankovic has been judged.
Sailing On
With just the league left to play for, anything other than a title win would render this season a catastrophic failure for LCS, and raise serious questions about the wisdom of Ranko’s mid-season sacking.
In my view, the club has two options; go for star power, with a name like Steven Gerrard (reportedly close to taking the Singapore job) who would surely dominate every dinner conversation, or an experienced Asian specialist (Jesus Casas comes to mind). Whoever it is, the appointment needs to come quickly to avoid our season being derailed, if the first post-Ranko display against Young Lions was anything to go by.
Ultimately, Ranko’s tenure has left behind silverware and a structure of success, but also birthed an evolutionary debate on what style of football the Sailors are expected to deliver. But all said and done, he has contributed to building a Lion City Sailors that learned to compete beyond our shores, putting our name on the Asian football map, and that alone has changed the trajectory of the club.
For that, he will always have my, and many other Sailors fans’ gratitude.
Hvala Ranko!
Written by Herman
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