A new direction for Young Lions needed

After another heavy defeat, 1-6, by Genera Young Lions we once again heard the same reasoning by the Football Association of Singapore (FAS) that the players are gaining experience for the real target at year end - which is the SEA Games for those who do not know.

I cannot tahan anymore and will like to tell FAS, since the Cubs inception back in 2003, that plan has never worked.

Instead it have only breed an elitism system in recent years and now most of the clubs have chosen to give up developing any players. (Reason I have said too many times, good players they lose to FAS, bad players they also lose as FAS dump these players on them)

Worse is even the reasoning by FAS of youngsters gaining experience make no sense as remember Geylang United (now Geylang International), who before the inception of the Cubs, have given debut to the likes of Indra Shadan, Ahmad Latiff, Lionel Lewis, Hassan Sunny and Baihakki Khaizan etc

Also, the now defunct, Sembawang Rangers had given Noh Alam Shah his debut after getting him on a $2 transfer while the Warriors had given more playing time to Ashrin Shariff in one season than the Cubs two seasons (At that time, other than debut year, in 2003, FAS stuffed the Cubs with overage and experienced players and only called up youngsters to ask them to sit on the bench)

Therefore it is not clubs are not giving youngsters experience but rather the fact the youngsters have to be good enough first and at this moment in time they are not.

In recent time, FAS have gone glory hunting with their LionsXII project and have cut youth development to the bare bones by cutting funding to the clubs Centre of Excellence (COEs) to the point they rather not bother about it while the National Football Academy (NFA) have failed to deliver.

Instead an elitism mentality have been breed as how can FAS explain the attitude of Sahil Suhaimi to his lacked of fitness and the way Shakir Hamzah continue to get in trouble thus FAS should have clam down on their attitude earlier and not looked the other way by telling us they are still learning.

Now we faced a situation where many of these 'elite players' have failed to make the grade and the National team have to recall the oldies like Daniel Bennett etc.

That is why we need  a new direction for the Cubs for if FAS continue to walk down this path where they want to keep all the promising youngsters for their Cubs and discouraged the clubs from competing with them then we will never develop a bigger pool of players.

I will repeat it again - Nobody will develop players so that another will come to get them for free.

We need to go back to 2003 where the Cubs were giving those on the fringes their chance and it saw Aliff Shafaein took the chance.

It is those on the fringes that need Genera Young Lions to give them the chance for more experience as let be honest,the results are not any different with the youngsters suffering thrashing and if the clubs had gotten their hands on Khariul Amri and Harris Harun etc they would have played them for clubs are not stupid as seem by the examples listed above.

Therefore I can only hope when the new team is chosen for FAS in June election they will make the Cubs change course for it is not working now.