just rambling

What keeps a community of football kakis together

For almost a decade now, I’ve been regularly meeting a group of secondary schoolmates to play soccer on Sundays. Unlike others whom often have to play with strangers in street soccer courts or arrange field matches, we’ve been able to play amongst ourselves. That’s because we have a sizable number of players, and a large multi-purpose court which we adjust its size to fit our game. It can get as big as 11-a-side  to a simple 5-a-side game.

We used to start our games at 10am, but nowadays people stroll in so late that we can only start after noon. The level of competitiveness has also fallen over the years. Several of the better players have left overseas or simply lost interest in the game. While some new players have joined us, they are mostly in for just a game of “Sunday soccer”.

On one hand, it still amazes me how we have kept a community together for a decade. What started as a love for the game among secondary school mates has not only kept going but become a purpose to meet up and stay in touch. No one is forced to come, every week a group of us just SMS and call one another to make sure we have enough people coming. We’ve also allowed friends of friends to join our game and this has brought in some interesting characters to the team too.

However, such openness and casualness has affected the quality of our game and has led us to question why we come together. A few years ago, we agreed that we came together no longer just because of football but to keep in touch. This was why we resisted becoming a amateur football team that went around challenging other teams. Instead, we played amongst ourselves — some taking it more seriously than others.

But, what happens when the activity that brings you together fails the community? This seems to be the problem our community is facing now. People are coming in simply because of habit. While we also come to keep in touch, there’s no reason to do that every week, monthly sessions will probably be enough. Indeed, a way out seems to be to organise a totally different activity — just a dinner or gathering.

For now, we’ve decided we still like to play our football and we like everybody to stay in touch. We’ve just got to show that we care by arriving on time and taking our game more seriously. It’s been a very important lesson I’ve learnt in community-making. It’s not something static, and no matter how casual it is, communities require a certain level of discipline and commitment to continue to stay relevant to its members

How Liverpool the football team trounced the nation of Singapore

To hear an ang moh calling Singaporeans to support their national team is surely as foreign a concept as the issue of nationalism is to its people. But that’s what Daniel Bennett, a defender in Singapore’s national football team did in The Sunday Times ahead of tonight’s friendly against Liverpool. Moreover, Bennett was actually raised in Liverpool. While he is actually a fan of Liverpool’s arch-rival Everton, Bennett has been a Singapore citizen for the past seven years and he spoke as a Singaporean:

“It looks like it will be a full house at Kallang, but wouldn’t it be great if all the fans support Singapore? These fans have no real connection with Liverpool. Their passion should be with the Singaporean national team. Instead, the National Stadium will look more like Anfield on match day.”

Indeed, the stadium was a sea of red tonight. In fact, my girlfriend, who doesn’t know much about soccer, thought it was nice to see Singapore supporters out in full force for our national team. That is until I told her that Liverpool’s colours are actually red and we saw the fans’ jerseys and scarves “fine print” on our TV screens.

I’m not against good football, great teams and even Liverpool but let’s put into perspective why these teams come here: money and good public relations. It’s no secret that Asia is a huge fan base and that clubs do get big money for being part of such tours.

What has Singapore gained from hosting a team like Liverpool? It is true that there is much that we can learn from these successful clubs. After all, we lost 5-0 tonight.

But the exchange was unequal and unfair. For more than half the game, Liverpool fielded a reserve team, not the one that fans watch week-in-week-out and show their support for. Yet, fans had to pay for tickets from $88 onwards. Our national team players got just a 90 minute encounter with a good team, I’m not sure how much they could have learnt, except one thing — that playing for this country is a tough choice.

Imagine playing for your own country but watching your fellow countrymen support the opposition. Plus, the voracity of the support is something you’ll never receive. I really wonder what our national team had to play for but their own pride. At least I hope they are getting paid in our national tradition of reward: cold hard cash.

How Liverpool the football club recreated Anfield in Singapore’s National Stadium symbolises the triumph of capitalism over nationalism. The peoples’ loyalties are no longer to the imaginary concept of nation-states but that of the trans-national corporations. Like countries, they embody values and lifestyles too, and it’s to them most of us subscribe to today. In fact, countries that are successful today, like Singapore, have taken on the corporate model in running the day-to-day affairs of its people.

So yes, our national team was trounced on the pitch tonight, but so was our nation too.

Just for my hair to stand

For those few minutes, the air was electrified. As the crowd stood up, then down, in a wave-like fashion, nothing, not even the empty stands in between, could stop the 30, 000 strong bring live to the drab grey dame. Not once, but twice, the crowd moved in unison, each of them eagerly awaiting their turn to stand up tall, motivated by nothing more than the desire to be one with the fan next to them.

This is what they called the Kallang Wave, and it returned so spontaneously tonight, for those precious few minutes, before a nation’s hopes were dashed as quickly as it took for this rare return of the wave to make me lose myself in the electrifying atmosphere.

This was the moment one lives for and also the only reason I keep going back to watch a Singapore soccer match, to capture and savour every moment like this because it tells me this place has a heart, a soul, if only we can keep it alive for longer.

Just last week, a friend called and offered me tickets to watch Singapore play Bahrain because he could not think of any other Singapore fan than me. I thought it was such a strange remark, but the more I thought about it, I realised it was not so much the soccer that kept me going back, but really this grand idea of nationhood and how it manifested through its people. The Singapore soccer-watching crowd is strange, diverse and mostly pessimistic. There are the folks who attribute every outcome to a bookie’s decision, some dissect the players by race, others always think of what they players should have done… but come that genuine moment, whether it is watching the team take the lead or claw back a goal, every one unites and all is forgiven that very moment.

As my friend said, its these moments where “I can feel my hair stand.” And for the record, we lost 3-7 to Uzbekistan.