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- Oct 7, 2014
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The general consensus nowadays is that Singaporean football has deteriorated considerably since its heyday in the 1980s, 1990s, and perhaps the early 2000s. I don't need to tell you that, just ask anyone who was alive around that period of time and had even the slightest idea of local football.
This Straits Times commentary attributes the fall to factors such as infighting and poor management, while this Medium article makes mention of some cultural factors that lead to rigidity.
Yet, according to the latest FAS Annual Report (April 2019 - March 2020), we're still paying large sums of money to the top shots over at the Football Association of Singapore. The remuneration of the top 3 highest-paid staff ranged between S$200,000-S$400,000, which translates to roughly S$16,700-S$33,300 a month. Too little? Too much? Just right? You decide. Though I think that's definitely too much for running an association that hasn't really done much in the past ten years.
This month (Dec 2020), former FAS Deputy Director Rikram Jit Singh Randhir Singh and his wife were charged in court for conspiring to cheat FAS, and back in 2017 there was a whole saga over a sum of donations made, stirring quite a bit of controversy and leading to a number of arrests made.
It's pretty sad to see how much local football has degraded, though it's expected since FAS wants to spend less than a third of the amount it pays key personnel (roughly S$1.6 million) on community football. And hopes of pursuing football as a legitimate career have been dampened, especially since Ben Davis' request for National Service deferment was rejected.
No wonder overseas clubs (Japan and Brunei) have been continually trashing our teams at the Singapore Premier League these days.
This Straits Times commentary attributes the fall to factors such as infighting and poor management, while this Medium article makes mention of some cultural factors that lead to rigidity.
Yet, according to the latest FAS Annual Report (April 2019 - March 2020), we're still paying large sums of money to the top shots over at the Football Association of Singapore. The remuneration of the top 3 highest-paid staff ranged between S$200,000-S$400,000, which translates to roughly S$16,700-S$33,300 a month. Too little? Too much? Just right? You decide. Though I think that's definitely too much for running an association that hasn't really done much in the past ten years.
This month (Dec 2020), former FAS Deputy Director Rikram Jit Singh Randhir Singh and his wife were charged in court for conspiring to cheat FAS, and back in 2017 there was a whole saga over a sum of donations made, stirring quite a bit of controversy and leading to a number of arrests made.
It's pretty sad to see how much local football has degraded, though it's expected since FAS wants to spend less than a third of the amount it pays key personnel (roughly S$1.6 million) on community football. And hopes of pursuing football as a legitimate career have been dampened, especially since Ben Davis' request for National Service deferment was rejected.
No wonder overseas clubs (Japan and Brunei) have been continually trashing our teams at the Singapore Premier League these days.
