I’ve taken a couple of days to rewatch the game – twice. I’ve also taken a couple of days to process not just the final, but the build-up to it, and of course, our amazing journey to even get to this stage. Needless to say, even if it didn’t feel like it at the final whistle, or even now, there was way more to celebrate rather than to cry about. Way more positives than negatives. My post-match interview focused a lot on how lacking Sharjah FC was in sportsmanship, but I promise that for this article, which I hope to come back to in years to come, I will devote only a small section to them, because they are irrelevant and unimportant. We should be proud of what we achieved, on and off the field. Let’s dive right into it.
Sh**jah and Their Supposed Superiority
The way Sh**jah acted in the build-up to the game, you might have thought that they were a world-class team – the way they demanded for a change of venue, the way their coach was completely ungrateful for all the improvements made to Bishan Stadium. They spoke about “maximum standards” and about how Jalan Besar Stadium wasn’t worthy of hosting a final. Of course, we knew that was just bullshit.
They were just afraid of losing on astroturf. And while we expected a game where Sh**jah would try their best to blow us away, what we got was very different. Sh**jah FC did not look like a team that was better than us. If there was one aspect they were better than us at, it was gamesmanship. And so at first when I drafted this article, I went into detail, talking about each incident of bad sportsmanship, talking about how time-wasting when leading may be part of the game, but dropping to feign injuries at 0-0 to halt a counter-attack was definitely a lot more sinister, and a lot more shameful. Especially when you consider the teams’ relative rankings on the world stage.
But I realised the article would be way too long – so here goes, I summarised all my thoughts into a poem.
An Ode to Sh**jah FC
You tried to move the match away,
Said Jalan Besar’s not okay.
“No astroturf, we want real grass,
It’s more comfortable when we dive en masse”.
The upgrades came — still you complained,
“Not a proper ground,” your coach maintained.
Then came matchday, the crowd roared loud,
Our Sailors took to the field to do us proud.
Your team came with all the reputation,
But left us all in pure exasperation.
Sailors in a final, that will go down in history,
Sharjah? When your players next go down is the only mystery.
You held your legs and clutched your knees,
A masterclass in cheap theatrics, please.
A shove? A scream. A puff? Collapse!
Your playbook full of cunning traps.
So congratulations Sh**jah, you’ve won the cup,
For now I guess I’ll shut the fuck up.
But if we ever meet again,
It will be you, not us, that feels the pain.
An Even Battle
Now that we’ve dealt with those irrelevant imbeciles, let’s talk about the match itself. Unexpectedly, it was rather even. I thought that our Sailors would have to be forced into a low block and defend for their lives for the majority of the match, but it wasn’t the case. Just look at the stats at half-time, and at full-time.
The stats reflected what we saw – an even game that could have gone either way. Diogo Costa hit the post, Bart and Diogo had efforts cleared right in front of goal, Bart himself missed a glorious chance on his left foot when put through by Song. On their end, they will point to chances for Ousmane Camara from a corner, and a freekick that Izwan did excellently to save to prevent the score from becoming 2-0.
Remember of course, that Sharjah came into this as major favourites. The Opta Power Rankings may not be definitive, but it serves as a good guide for the teams’ relative quality. Transfermarkt also lists Sharjah’s team as having 7 times the market value as us. By all measures, we were huge underdogs coming into this.
But it sure didn’t seem that way, for more than an hour. You can tell, just from the faces of the Sharjah fans. They were boisterous at kick-off and in the first half, but they grew increasingly frustrated and subdued.
I think why there’s such a huge sadness is because of how close we came to winning the ultimate prize. It would have been an amazing way to cap off an amazing ACL2 campaign, and an amazing night. It sounds weird to say this, but had we just fallen to a routine 2-0 loss to a much better team, we could not say that our Sailors didn’t do well this year, but it might not have been as sad. Somehow, the fact that they did so well makes us even more sad. I believe given enough time, these feelings of sadness will fade and be replaced with intense pride in what the team has achieved.
The Crowd
We Singaporeans can be a very passive crowd sometimes. But given the right circumstances, given the right impetus and people that they believe in, the crowd can be very very boisterous. Just ask any K-Pop stars, or the political parties that held their rallies recently.
And so it was no different at Bishan Stadium on Sunday night. On an evening where there was unrelenting rain, and supporters had to sit through a constant drizzle, the crowd still showed up in numbers, and made themselves heard. It is not easy sometimes to make a huge noise when a stadium is open-air, as the sound isn’t contained, but when Maxime hit his equaliser, what a roar that brought!
There were flying limbs all around the stadium, people falling over themselves to hold each other in a tight embrace, people fist-pumping so hard you’d think they struck the lottery and of course, tons of screaming and shouting. Some may say, but of course, that was an equaliser in the 91st minute – of course there was gonna be a huge outpouring of sound.
However, I take you back to when Sharjah’s first goal went in. Usually, football writers would talk about how the goal “silenced the home crowd”. But aside from perhaps a few moments of shock and sadness, if anything, the atmosphere got better. People continued singing from all corners of the stadium. Those in the Crew continued their songs and chants, while in other parts of the stadium, I was informed that pockets of fans started their own “Let’s Go Sailors”, “Come on Sailors”, and of course, “We Want Goal” chants.
And in the 5 minutes before we got our equaliser, every free-kick, every throw-in was greeted with intense cheering that we have not heard in a while. Sharjah players were clearly affected by this as well, as the previously-calm players took to hacking the ball into the night sky at every opportunity. And it was from one of those clearances that we eventually scored our goal.
And that brings us to …
The Goal
We may not have brought back the cup, but we will always have the memory of that Lestienne goal with us. You’ll doubtless have seen replays of the goal many many times, so maybe check it out from a different angle, from a condo many storeys above, and listen to THAT NOISE.
It was a team goal as well. Once the clearance was sent back into the opponents’ half by Bailey Wright, Lennart Thy got to it first, and Abdul Rasaq then had to be calm and lay it off for Diogo Costa to cross it into the box. Sharjah had been dealing well with the aerial balls all night, and so Diogo tried something different. A low skidding cross to the edge of the penalty area – that looked like it was headed for Song.
But Song must have heard a call, because he left it for an onrushing Lestienne, who struck with unerring precision.
That ROAR, and the players scrambling to retrieve the ball from the net – that filled the Bishan stadium crowd with belief, belief that we could go on and nab another goal and win it. Alas, it was not to be.
But no matter, we’ll always have that goal. A moment where the Crew dared to dream, and where Singapore football fans dared to dream.
Conclusion
At the end of the game, there was intense sadness everywhere I looked, but not one person in the crowd wasn’t proud. This was a Sailors team that had defied the odds by even reaching this stage, but dared to go one step further, and try to defy them once more. It may not have happened for us this time, but our players and staff will learn from this experience, and come back even stronger next time.
I’d like to end by thanking the staff behind the scenes. What an amazing day out it was. From 4pm when I was there, there was beer, food, stick-on tattoos, carnival games, the works. What really caught my eye (or ears) was the presence of not 1, but 2 busking bands, that really helped to liven up the atmosphere, They took the effort to learn the Sailors songs as well, helping to drum up support way before kick-off even approached. All this doesn’t happen by chance. The staff worked tirelessly to ensure that it was a real occasion to remember.
This is something we take for granted when we go to overseas games in Japan or Korea, but it really ought to be more common in Singapore. Feedback for this carnival was overwhelmingly positive, and we’d love to see more of this in future.
As for Sharjah, congratulations on the cup, and you have some amazing fans, who travelled by the busloads to come support the team. We spoke with some of them pre and post-match and they were warm and gracious. For the players and management – we’ll get you next time, but even if we don’t meet again, because of the effort put in for this event, and because of the almighty scare we gave them on the pitch …
THEY’LL REMEMBER WHO WE ARE.
Written by Eddy Hirono
Video credit to Gerald’s friend – thank you kind soul!
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