I’ve made it a mission to go and watch football in every country that I visit. It’s not a mission that has a particular end point. There’s no way to truly be a completist – it’s not like ‘Doing the 92‘. It’s also not just because I really like football. I’m a fan, and there is a team that I follow (passionately), but I’m not someone who’s going to lose sleep trying to work out tactics or formations.
The reason that I do this, is that it tells you so much about people. Going to a match is one of the few things that can give you an understanding of how people come together, wherever you are in the world. It tells you sometimes about the positives and sometimes about the negatives associated with the culture, but it always tells you something.
In Singapore, I found a timely reminder that what gives us joy as people is so much bigger than the narrative we’ve constructed around religion. That’s heavy!
I went on this trip not long after the attacks in Paris at the Stade-de-France. Religious tensions around the world were peaking again, and the narrative about the impossibility of people to understand each other and get along was more or less omnipresent.
It’s fair to say club football in Singapore is not something that most people are interested in. It’s a side of Singapore that isn’t advertised and that people don’t talk about. This is, after all, a cosmopolitan hub of development, a doorway for the business community into Southeast Asia and a city hell-bent on rapidly evolving in a thoroughly modern way. The story of flying to Singapore is the story of the travel experience, the holiday experience, the shopping experience, the business experience, and most certainly the food experience – but it is not the story of the sporting experience.
I took a couple cab rides earlier in the day before the match – first to meet up with friends and then to go to the game itself. Neither driver could understand why I was going. One driver just said over and over “it’s so boring, you are going to be so disappointed – I am so sorry for you!” while asking why I would care to see a Singaporean football team when I have the LA Lakers in my backyard. The other driver offered to just turn around and drive me back to the hotel! My friends in Singapore, more optimistically, pointed out that it could be an opportunity to see a side of Singaporean people that isn’t typically advertised to tourists. How right.
The Jalan Besar Stadium is over 80 years old and is the birthplace of Singaporean football. I was here for a cup tie: Singapore’s LionsXII were taking on Pahang FC of Malaysia, in the Malaysian Cup quarterfinals. The odds, in every conceivable sense, were against the home side: it had recently been announced that LionsXII had been ejected from the Malaysian league. The club’s future was in doubt and with the Cup being the final act of the domestic season, LionsXII needed to overturn a 3 goal deficit from the away leg at Pahang to literally live to fight another day!
Despite the stadium featuring two open ends behind the goals, the fans made one hell of a racket. An emcee came out on the pitch, enthusiastically reading the name of every single player in the squad and generally just trying to gee everyone up for the contest. As for the crowd themselves, many folks were covered in shirts from huge English clubs like Liverpool and Manchester United. There was a decent travelling contingent from Pahang on hand as well. For the first 75 minutes, I took up a position on the main stand’s upper tier so as to get the best vantage point.
The match itself was never going to win any awards for technical skill and no one on the pitch was going to win the Ballon d’Or. But, energised by the atmosphere, these LionsXII players gave it absolutely everything. The crowd reacted to every kick and every tackle, raged at the referee for every injustice they perceived against their team, and sang and shouted longer and louder than any crowd I’ve ever seen or heard at an MLS match in the States, to be sure.
With this as background, I realised as the game pressed on that what was going on on the pitch was exciting stuff in context, but it wasn’t the main event here. I turned to face the fans instead of the game.
This is a country whose religious makeup is very unique, with Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and non-religious people all making up significant portions of the population. And they were all represented here. All of these people from various backgrounds, in this stadium, in this city, whether they were wearing a Chelsea shirt or a hijab, cared about one thing at this moment and that was cheering on this team together.
LionsXII scored twice in the first 20 minutes to reduce the aggregate deficit to one goal and everyone thought the heroic comeback, and survival of the club, was on the cards. Could they do it? When they scored the first goal, the place absolutely erupted with people dancing in the stands, high-fiving and hugging each other. The atmosphere was stirring in this place that people brought their children and grandchildren to, showing them for 2 hours a week about this thing that they loved, where they sat next to people who often looked little like them, everyone in it together.
And it was taken away from them.
I moved down to the lower tier of the main stand and stood near the pitch to witness the final minutes as LionsXII poured forward, exerting relentless pressure on a Pahang side that remained resolute. All around me were fans, gripping the railing, the seat in front of them, each other, anxiously trying to give encouragement for club, community and country. The match finished 2-0, LionsXII were eliminated 4-3 on aggregate and Pahang were into the semi-finals.
It would later transpire that this was the last match LionsXII would play – the club was thereafter dissolved.
The people, meanwhile, presumably, go on. Many of them clearly, like myself, have loyalties and allegiances to great clubs in far off places. But to come together in such a diverse community, without regard to the sectarianism, racism or politics that influence the game and society in so many parts of the world is a special thing. Jalan Besar Stadium may only hold 8,000 but it conjured up the kind of respectful atmosphere and passion that the likes of Celtic Park or the Ataturk should aspire to match.
Hopefully what I experienced isn’t gone forever, because the people who filled that stadium deserve better. The moment they created with their team was bigger than football, bigger than religion. For some people that night ended in tears but for me it ended with a renewed sense of hope. Cheers, LionsXII.
