Meritocracy looked the best step forward

Up until now, I have written nothing on the Lion City Cup as I believed youth development is best left out of the limelight.

This stand have been formed as I have noted over the years how when the public get into the act, a lot of actions do not reflect what is best for the players but what is most popular.

At this point in time, the youth players bodies are still growing up and while they need to play football, they also need a lot of rest and one thing one read is how fans want these teams to play in as many top competition as possible.

This will not be good for long-term development as one believed for a body can only take so much; especially one that is not fully developed yet.

Let the coaches of the teams decided what is best and that is where I come to the main point.

Anybody with a good memory will remember the uproar that accompany the appointment of Dejan Gluscevicthus and latter when the U16 also went along the same route, it was no less different.

It is now over two years (for the Dejan decision) and that decision have been fully justified.

The U15 have developed well under him and it is as clear as day he has been able to strengthen the technical abilities of the youngsters under him.

Just note the difference in class between the side under him and the YOG side a year ago, when they were both the same age then for the Haiti coach had said something that will always stick in my mind.

He noted the technical abilities of the Singapore side and told his charges to push up against Singapore as he know the Singapore boys will not be able to play the ball around and have to resort to long ball.

He was right and regardless of how one feel about the 'invasion' of the foreign coaches, it is time for local coaches to face up to the fact we need to learn from them and not just comment about the different culture or we are no less inferior.

This only give the impression we do not need to learn anything and we do for we have to ask ourselves if our coaches really had any value outside Singapore.

This may sound harsh but it is a fact that when overseas clubs/teams are looking for coaches, Singaporeans do not registered and this is a result that local coaches have not proven anything yet.

If we have then, we will be like Europeans or South American with the ex of the Dutch who attract the Aussies and the Brazilain and Argentinian who attract the Japanese.

But we do not have any market other than Singapore itself so let forget the culture or superior or inferior talks.

Indeed culture may be the problem as we seem to be following our former colonial master blindly on his sensitive subject.

The English love to tell the rest of the world they do not need to learn much about football from anybody and indeed, Stuart Perice noted the 'DNA of the English are different' from others so the English cannot learn.

This is nonsense as babies can learn anything as they are a clean sheet of paper that can have nothing written on it.

So it is the resistance of the grown up that is the problem. 

Indeed culture is the problem and in such cases, we may have no choice but received the 'aids' of the foreign ones to change it as locals are unfortunately too accustomed to English football on what it tell us; which we usually agreed with it.

So for too long, it is the long ball culture we have developed since the 70s.

But now, we have a choice and we can be positive and be willing to learn from the likes of Dejan Gluscevicthus and our technical Director on the subject of coaching thus changing our style or we can be like the English and tell the rest of the world of our 'different culture'.

I believed most will take the right path so meritocracy has won and it is indeed the best step forward.