It has been a quiet few months here at Sailorfantalk and for fans of local football, but the 2025/26 season is finally upon us! Behind the scenes, the Sailors have been far from quiet, working on a number of astute signings to strengthen key positions, as we look to once again challenge on multiple domestic and regional fronts.
As the dust settles, it looks like we have 4 new players coming into the squad this season:
Safuwan Baharudin
A stalwart for the national team for well over a decade with 124 caps, Safuwan was one of the best local players that we could have signed in this window, given that many of the top locals already play for Sailors.
Safuwan was the first Singaporean player to appear on the modern FIFA game when he was playing for Melbourne City in 2015. After a short loan spell there, he spent close to 10 years in the Malaysia Super League, amassing over 130 appearances, and this marks his first return to the local league since his Young Lions stint in 2011. In his last season at Selangor, he kept 7 clean sheets and recorded 1.40 interceptions and 3.83 aerial duels won per game.
Given Coach Ranko’s tendency to play 3 centrebacks, additional depth in this position would go a long way in helping us compete effectively in four different competitions.
Ivan Susak
Becoming the tallest player to ever play for Sailors at 2.03m, Ivan Susak had an impressive season in the Croatian top tier, getting 10 clean sheets and a 73% save percentage from 35 games. There will no doubt be some concerns over Izwan’s minutes this season, but Ivan’s experience in Europe will surely complement the 2 solid keepers we already have in Izwan and Adib, to bring our goalkeeping unit to another level.
Tsiy Ndenge
Not a name most local fans are familiar with, but if his youtube highlights are anything to go by, Tsiy adds another dimension to our midfield as a physical box-to-box midfielder who also provides a goal threat from outside the box. In the last 3 seasons, he recorded a pass accuracy of 82.3%, with 0.32 key passes and 0.61 successful dribbles per game.
A youth product of Borussia Mönchengladbach, Tsiy brings plenty of experience from several European leagues, and it was rumoured that Sailors had to fend off interest from some clubs playing in UEFA competitions to secure his signature.
Anderson Lopes
For those familiar with Asian football, the headline signing of the window needs no introduction. Anderson Lopes has scored so many goals that the goal compilation video posted by Yokohama F. Marinos is 45 minutes long. The Sailors had no problems scoring goals last season, netting a whopping 145 goals across all competitions, and to add to that firepower we’ve somehow managed to get the J League top scorer for the past 2 seasons to grace the sunny shores of Singapore.
Lopes recorded 0.67 goal contributions per game in his time at Yokohama F. Marinos, and scored with 18.2% of his shots. Huge expectations are inevitable with his reputation and price tag, and I hope he hits the ground running once the SPL season kicks off.
I’ll admit that I don’t have much more knowledge on our new signings, other than having watched Safuwan play for the national team, and the occasional Marinos J League game on youtube, so I’ll leave it to our foreign football correspondent Joseph Chin to take us through his thoughts on each of them:
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2 months to catch a breather, after 2 of the most intense months in Q2 of 2025, and here we are kickstarting the real festival of football in August.
Apart from keeping the core of our squad and also sending some players with potential out for game time and experience, we are looking forward to seeing some of our new signings come in to help build on the progress of last season.
If “this is Home truly, where I know I must be..
Then Mattar is where dreams are waiting for him, where the river always flows.
Putting aside the obvious Kit Chan references in the lead up to National Day, seeing Safuwan Baharudin kitted out in a Sailors jersey is a nice change of scenery from Selangor. While the deal was framed as a loan from the Malaysian Super League club, and whom we might potentially meet in this season’s AFC Champions League Two (ACL2), it is very likely that this return home will be a permanent one in the end.
As much as Selangor has become a stepping stone for the likes of Yazan Al Arab to eventually go on to greater things for club and country with Jordan, who are debuting in the upcoming World Cup 2026 (and where two other Jordanians who played key roles in this historic qualification still play at), staying in the Super League would feel like a step back for Safuwan given the way he was made to train with the reserves towards the end of last season, on orders of the management.
The faded Red Giants would have also taken the chance to renew their squad with a defence built around Jordan’s World Cup hero Mohammad Abualnadi and the eye-catching captures of promising youngsters Chrigor (Buriram United) and Thai international Picha Autra up front to complement the other Jordanian in midfield, the newly minted vice-captain Noor al Rawabdeh.
That said, with the vast international experience on offer for the Sailors via Safuwan, the defence is poised to take a step up where additional options to initiate attacks from deep will go hand-in-glove with the invaluable leadership of the well-travelled centreback who has excelled at home with LIONSXII and abroad in the A-League and MSL.
What I would envision is Safuwan excelling in a sweeper role as the last man, or a libero in between defence and midfield with his elegance on the ball mixed with the typical steel of a centre back. As a versatile utility player who is also known to surprise with clutch goals.
Susak, not Susah… lah!
If his name is that difficult to pronounce (susah in Malay means difficult), I think he is gonna be a difficult goalkeeper to score against in both domestic and continental matches. That is, unless he meets his Kryptonite in the form of a striker named Salah (however flawed my logic is hurhur)
On to the more serious part: being named in the team of the year in last season’s Croatian League, where Slaven Belupo nearly made it to Europe for the first time since 2013 is an impressive feat in itself. This is particularly true when it’s doubly difficult for a provincial club to be noticed in a league where the main Dinamo Zagreb-Hajduk Split duopoly dominates discourse on and off the pitch.
I believe that the Sailors have gotten a hidden gem in that regard, given that his growth trajectory is as high as his impressive 2.03m height in itself. With fellow Croat Toni Datkovic being here to ensure his transition into life in Singapore goes as smoothly as possible, the early-season blues is likely to be minimized as he gets used to living up the expectations of being champions in blue and excelling on the continental stage at the first time of asking.
Perhaps that also ties in with the strategic shifts in recruitment amongst our competitors, where Tampines’ capture of current Malta international Trent Buhagiar points to a general trend of employing a technically accomplished foreign forward up-front to give some challenge to our defence. As is the tendency to spread out the attacking threats amongst multiple players instead of having a single focal point however fantastic he is (Seia Kunori and Tomoyuki Doi being great examples of how the Eastern rivals uses focal point men)
But the most important yardstick of which Susak will be judged on is during the Shopee Cup and ACL2.
Champagne Supernova
In order to tell you the ending, we need to start the story via the wayback machine
“Shanghai Port must be sick and tired of Anderson Lopes scoring against them again. or maybe they will table a shock offer for the striker now that SIPG is returning to ACLE and Yokohama isn’t (unless they win the whole thing)”
“it has to be Anderson Lopes scoring the winner, again.”
“Anderson Lopes scoring with a penalty right at the end”
“Anderson Lopes scoring the penalty in 120+2mins just before the game was going into a penalty shootout?”
A few months ago, Lopes was just another striker whose Asian exploits made it into my regular ACL Roundups. This wasn’t intended as a “go and get him” plea given that the likes of Shanghai Port and rumoured suitors from UAE and Saudi Arabia would have offered a fat pay package and some ACL Elite action to continue cementing legend status in some of Asia’s most competitive leagues. Even interest from Brasileirao giants Botafogo would have sounded plausible, when proven quality from Europe or Asia would have made for a good homecoming in many a Brazilian player’s twilight years.
But lo and behold, when the gossip mill went into overdrive in the middle of Yokohama F. Marinos’ stinker of a season amid rumours of discord within the supposedly calm club, coincided with a sharp drop in form for the two time J League top scorer. An explosive rant (by Japanese standards) about the club’s direction actually crystallized Lopes’ decision to leave and for the struggling board to cash in, despite his popularity with the Marinos fans.
And what a transfer coup it is, because I’m suspecting that some J League fans would have looked on in disbelief when one of the league’s prized assets get sold on to a club in an unknown league (in their terms) especially when J League clubs are hardly on the radar of Thai or Malaysian clubs. It remains to be seen how Lopes will handle being the biggest fish in a small pond instead of being just one of many in a galaxy of stars in the Gulf.
The signs look good though: As a prolific forward whose versatile dynamism on the flanks can be layered on his keen eye for goal in the middle, Lopes can benefit from the quality service from the likes of Ramselaar and Lestienne, while adding samba flair to the Sambal football of Shawal. While there will be slight concerns about the Brazilian having to adjust to a faster pace towards the European standards that the Sailors benchmark themselves on (as opposed to the Japanese precision and coherence from familiar Brazilian styles of play in the J league).
Furthermore, Lopes’ career with the Sailors will be defined by his contribution on the Asian stage. With the likes of Gamba, Pohang, Beijing and MacArthur lying in wait, having wisened up to our soak, strike, smash and grab gameplans against Sanfrecce and Sydney last season, it is now up to Lopes to be the spearhead in a more expansive, proactive gameplan to take more initiative in bringing the game to our strongest opponents and be more clinical in goal.
On the home front though, our opponents would have moved to shore up their defences, whether through a foreign goalkeeper (Matt Silva tied down to Tanjong Pagar after a promising early spell, Balestier signing Croatian custodian Mario Mustapic to mirror our purchase of Susak, and the returning Takahiro Koga for Albirex) or the popular fallback of foreign strongmen at the back (Hougang going for a strong American literally named Strong, Balestier getting a large Balkan contingent, Geylang trialling Nikola Ignjatovic-Josh Pereira combination in central defence and distinct Japanese and Australian flavours for other clubs).
Cracking the low block puzzle would be key to our title defence, as is the unpredictability of the new Brazilian contingent of the Young Lions where Enrico Walmrath was developed in our U21 ranks and the effectiveness of the new samba flavour remaining to be seen after the mixed results of the previous Japanese experiment.
Tsiy Me No Up
And no.. Tsiy William Ndenge was not someone whom we would have looked up on google until recently. Neither is it an inexplicable incoherent mess emblematic of a panicking binge buy closer to the end of the transfer window.
When a well placed independent source and a tip-off from an esteemed member surfaced the intelligence about a mystery new player sighted at the first training session, the banter that ensued was but a smokescreen for one of our most intelligent buys so far.
True to the player’s understated personality, the deal went through with minimal hitches amidst the sky-high attention of our new Adidas strips. That came in handy given the level of (alleged) interest from variously ambitious European clubs (see below) for a free agent, whose contract was allowed to expire by Grasshopper Club Zurich despite being a main starter in a trying season where the club barely avoided relegation by goal difference and then survived a playoff.
- FC Copenhagen: the defending champions of the Danish Superliga whose season has started and are finding their stride in a comprehensive UCL qualifier win over Kosovo’s Drita
- AEK Athens: won their Conference League qualifier last week and are poised to finish the job against Hapoel Be’er Sheva. and yes their fans are much more passionate than our laid back brethren.
- Cologne: As a Cologne native, Tsiy had the opportunity to return to the Bundesliga with his hometown club after Effzeh topped the second division. That homecoming would have been more remarkable considering he had never played for the Billy Goats even at youth level.
- Cagliari: the Sardinians, whose marquee player is former Everton defender Yerry Mina, are looking at midfield reinforcements as they look to stay in the Serie A consistently
Now all these clubs are wondering who is that Singaporean upstart whose-eye catching moves are like that of a tech startup. The same innovative disruption of the established footballing order that looks diametrically different from the established Arab approach of splashing the cash, but looked down upon all the same given the disparity in standards.
But that is to miss the point: as much as we can offer a safe environment to play football and live in (while getting the young kids educated), being in the thick of the action for continental football in an up-and-coming club with progressive ideals and potential upsides would have been more preferable than sitting on the bench, while being sparingly used (or made to wait for opportunities) as a mere squad player in a Champions League chasing club despite the higher level of exposure that even the Conference League offers.
For us, a versatile defensive minded player who can anchor the defensive midfield or slot in seamlessly as centre-back would be an asset for both our team and especially Hami Syahin. In relieving some of the deep-lying playmaker duties of Rui Pires, the tall imposing German of Cameroonian ancestry will also dovetail in with the more technical approach offered by Hami in a key area of midfield. With a knack for scoring long range goals, there is also an unpredictability factor that could be used against domestic defences aiming to keep our attackers at bay from the outset.
On the continental front, the seamless constant transition between defending and midfield duties will be more pronounced as opposing attackers will be aiming to dictate the pace of the game before our midfield are allowed to gain a foothold. The alertness required of our defence against players with vast international experience in the ACL2 also necessitates a top shelf defensively minded player who has shown his mettle in the Swiss League through his thorough coverage of the pitch.
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That’s it for the lowdown on our new Sailors, the season kicks off in a couple of weeks and we’ll be back soon with previews of the Community Shield, the SPL and our ACL2 draw!
Written by Joseph Chin and Chin Heng
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