Malaysia Cup

This is going to be an article about Singapore in the Malaysia Cup, 1994. Just realised that a lot of the readers here would be more likely to support Johor or Kedah or Selangor or Brunei or whatever but I’m a Singaporean, so it is what it is.

Let's cut to the chase: we have a 5-parter on Singapore's 1994 season. This is what inspired the blatherings that follow...

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5


I suppose 1994 was quite a significant year in Singapore for football. Just like 1977 and 1980. That was the legend of the Malaysia Cup. 1994 was special because it was the introduction of Premier League football in Singapore, and the world would be entranced by Alex Ferguson’s dream team of Andrei Kanchelskis, Paul Ince, Peter Schmeichel, Steve Bruce, Ryan Giggs, Mark Hughes and above all, Eric Cantona. It was the year Man U became the biggest supported English club in Singapore and it’s remained that way since.

It was special because there was the World Cup, held against all odds in the USA because Columbia who were supposed to host it screwed up. It was supposed to be another boring World Cup in 1990 where everybody played defensive and the Germans won. But whoever thought of giving 3 points instead of 2 for a win should be given a pat on the back. A Brazil team won: not vintage Brazil, but still the Brazil of Romario and Bebeto. The notion that Americans just didn’t watch football was conclusively debunked by record attendances. Probably the average American didn’t care, but America has immigrants from all over the world, and they care. Following that was the formation of Major League Soccer, with such stars as Carlos Valderrama, Juan Pablo Angel and David Batman.

But the most significant thing about 1994 is that Singapore won the Malaysia Premier League and the Malaysia Cup for the last time.

That there is something magical about those days that we didn’t have in this team. Now you must remember that the Singapore National team as of 2008 is, statistically the best football team we ever had. We are three time winners of the Tiger Cup. The only other team who has won the Tiger Cup is Thailand and they have also won it 3 times. This means that we are the greatest football team in the (albeit short) history of the Tiger Cup. Remember that when we won it for the first time it was considered a shock upset because we were always supposed to be the minnows. The competition was supposed to have been dominated by those teams we slew in the semi-finals and finals: Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, Vietnam, Indonesia. But puny Singapore! Singapore with its 4 million people compared with - what, 50 million each for the aforementioned?

There was a distasteful whiff of unfairness about the whole thing. We weren’t really a “national” side. Sure, Spain has their Brazilian Senna, Portugal has their Brazilian Deco, but that’s only 1 player. The spine of our team is foreign. Let’s cut Daniel Bennett some slack because he is born and bred in Singapore, although he went to UWC and not one of our JCs. We didn’t see Agu Casmir and Itimi Dickson as Singaporeans, although they are guaranteed a warm welcome in the African part of Little India. The nice thing about Mustafic Fahruddin is that you could pretend to be a Malay with the Islamic name, but we could all see he was a Serbian / Turk / whatever. Shi Jiayi has done well, but we know only the younger generation spell their names in Hanyu Pinyin. Then you have your Alexander Durics and your Precious Eme-whatchamacallit.

This is not to take away the achievements of your Noh Alam Shahs, Baihakki Khaizans, Lionel Lewises, who deserve their successes but it does deflate what they’ve achieved because you know that by themselves they weren’t able to bring the national team to their current heights. I think the “we could not have done it on our own” is a big taint for the national team. We used to have our V Sundramoorthys playing for Kedah, Fandi Ahmads declining to play for Ajax (the idiot!) and Malek Awabs for Kuala Lumpur. But our homegrown talents were not able to get chances in 2nd and 3rd division clubs in Europe. Of course, I’m sure that many of them can walk into any Malaysian state side, but later on I’ll talk about how that is no longer our concern.

Still, that does not explain why we took the Abbas Saads and Jang Jungs as “one of our own” and not the rest of the aforementioned names. What I can guess at is that we have less media coverage of our national team, and that made them more familiar.

You could still name the Singapore squad of 1994. The spine was David Lee, Jang Jung, Malek Awab, Fandi and Abbas. Then there was Lim Tong Hai, Borhan Abu Samar (RIP), Saswa, Nazri Nasir, Kadir Yahya, Lee Man Hon. There was also a certain Michel Vana, a refugee from justice. Where in the world is Michel Vana?

Then the rest of those in the squad looking in: V Selvaraj, Zakaria Awang, Aide Iskandar, Rafi Ali.

I guess we knew them better because we saw them in the New Paper all the time. Fandi Ahmad and Abbas Saad were best friends on and off the pitch, charismatic strikers both. Nasri was more average in ability, but dependable all the same. Lim Tong Hai was the tall one with great aerial ability and a toughness that belied his boyish features, although when you remember that he blew Singapore’s best chance of a SEA games gold medal with 2 own goals, it only makes him more human. Lee Man Hon was your typical Ah Beng with the cultured left foot . David Lee was your typical neurotic goalkeeper who, as all good goalkeepers do, always screams at his defence. Borhan Abu Samar - Russian tank. Make that a dead Russian tank. Kadir Yahya, the normally quiet right back who somehow got into a running feud with the Uzbek left winger from Pahang. Saswa, the one player who is not a star, but still came off well in that legendary Malaysia Cup Final.

They were our guys. The same guys you either said “hi” to in your HDB corridors, or as is more common in Singapore, blithely ignored while walking past. We had Chinese, Malays and Indians, although, as always, Malays are over-represented. Abbas was Australian but Lebanese, Jang Jung was Korean - we could still call them Asian.

But time takes some shine off you. At that time we knew that Fandi Ahmad was the king of Singapore football. Now we know that he’s better at football than he is at coaching or running businesses. Abbas Saad, it turns out, bribed some opposing players. But unlike other corrupt players who were paid to throw matches, there was something romantically heroic about how he still did it for our side. Guess that redeems you in a way. Malek Awab, last I heard, working in a sports shop.

I guess that footballers never reclaim the prestige and glamour they had in their playing days and there are no exceptions. Pele is the sport’s ambassador, people will still see him as being just another over the hill old fart. Love those Mastercard advertisements though. Platini can become UEFA’s boss but he’s just some grumpy bureaucrat now, no matter that he is threatening to shake up the power bases of football. Doesn’t matter that Beckenbauer and Cryuff were successful coaches, they aren’t in the same class as Alex Ferguson or Marcelo Lippi. Cantona is playing beach soccer, presumably with his collar still up, and Maradona - enough said.

Still, who did McDonald’s choose to put in their advertisements? David Lee, Lim Tong Hai and Sundramoorthy. That’s very telling. And what a shame it is because none of these guys ever won a Tiger Cup.

Now media coverage also ensured that we knew about the opponents intimately as well. The black panther - Zainal Abidin, and the great Aussie defender Alan Davidson from Pahang. The nippy and fast youngsters from Kedah, our nearest challenger and the same team who defeated Singapore in the 1993 cup final. (Tragically many of that team would not play again after being convicted of match fixing. This does put a big taint on Singapore’s success of 1994.) That arrogant left footed Uzbek from Pahang. The notorious “soak and strike” tactics of Sarawak, who played like George Graham’s Arsenal, and who would pump the ball up to their monster of a striker (think his last name was Hunt). The big man - small man striking combination of Sabah.

We also knew of the coaches - the New Paper journalists were such reliable users of cliche that the name “Milos Kvacek” would hardly appear without the prefix “wily”. There was the “cunning” Ken Worden, specially brought in to get back our Malaysia Cup, who abruptly upped and left at the end of the season. And the great happy accident was that our beloved Douglas Moore, surely one of the best loved of our football coaches (alongside Uncle Choo and Radjoko Abramovich) took over. He had everything you liked about a coach - the passionate and straight shooting talk. That manic glare. That tactical acuity. That commitment to attack (and just as well that we had an abundance of attack going forward). Great man management, always able to instill spirit in his soldiers and bring the best out of them. Caring enough to nurture young talent to fruition.

And he was also great with the colourful analogy. Still remembered his comments: “It doesn’t matter what balls they play with, they could use a medicine ball for all I care”. Or, after Singapore won the Premier League from “only” beating Brunei 1-0, “Horrible match, it was shit. But who cares? We won the Premier League! Yippee!” The biggest tragedy was that we only had him for 1 season.

I suppose, fairly or unfairly, you always judged a coach from how he behaved on the touchline. Alex Ferguson is always chewing gum, ominously getting red under the collar, thinking about what to say for his next hairdryer outburst, and looking at his watch should he decide to hairdryer a referee instead of one of his own players. Arsene Wenger, always deep in thought, probably weighing between 20 different tactical formations, and having the demeanour of a person who has not used the bathroom in 2 weeks. Jose Mourino, a mad dog, pure and simple. Avram Grant, a stonefish. Rafael Benitez, always telling his midfielders to pull forward, or his defence to pull back. Sam Allardyce, always chewing gum, with that walkie talkie head set. Kevin Keegan, infamous for his heart on the sleeve. Harry Redknapp, relatively laid back, always looking ponderous and scratching his head. The manager is the ultimate spectator, and holds up the mirror to all the other spectators watching the TV broadcast, subconsciously telling them how they should behave.

Another reason why these guys were more famous is that 2 of them - Fandi Ahmad and David Lee had a link to the Uncle Choo era, the glorious days of your old Malaysian Cup, before the decline in the 80s set in. Fandi played in the team that won the Malaysia Cup in 1980, and I think David Lee was in the squad. We only got introduced to the Malaysia Cup because our parents were watching it in the 60s and the 70s. And to capture it after 14 years of drought, that made it doubly sweet.

There were the names of the people we had heard about but never saw - the Quah brothers, especially Quah Kim Song. The camel Rajagopal. The banana kick king. Dollah Kassim. We even knew the name of the bad guys from Selangor: Moktar Dahari, Zainal Abidin Hassan.

And that brings me to one of the most important reasons why the Malaysia Cup was such a big thing in Singapore: because we lost it more often that we won it. If you want to know why 1994 was such a big thing you could look at the intervening years when Fandi and Malek won Malaysia cups with Kuala Lumpur, and Sundram with Kedah. It was finally the year when all our talented people came home (minus Sundram, who was viewed as a disruptive influence in our squad. Sorry, Sundram, but Abbas was slightly better and a whole lot friendlier.) It was one last hurrah for those good old days.

But it was when we made amends for 1993 and 1990, when we lost 2 finals to Kedah. We banished the notion that we were not as tough as some of our Malaysian neighbours, and for those Malaysians who were tougher than us, we simply paid them off (Thanks, Abbas!). It was our dawn that came right after our darkest hour, when Singapore was relegated to the 2nd division in 1992, when we had a few foreign imports, but ironically when Fandi chose to play elsewhere. Guess the Pahang Sultan was more generous.

When I looked at the records of the Malaysian Cup, it struck me that Singapore lost a lot of finals - always to the same team, Selangor. There was always a siege mentality, and the referee was always giving the Malaysian side free kicks. If you were a Malaysian, the Singapore side was the one that you loved to hate. You always played better against Singapore. Singapore always had to be twice as good in order to win the Malaysia Cup. So be it. The Malaysia Cup would not be what it is if everything was fair.

I think you could say that Selangor was Real Madrid and Singapore was Barcelona. You always knew that Real Madrid were the Castillians and Barcelona were the Catalans. The 2 sides dominated the Malaysia Cup, and only occasionally you would get the Penangs, the Trengganus and the Johors getting a peek in. In those days there was no league, so the format of everything being a knockout match only made the rivalry even more intense. (Of course it was a more friendly rivalry, nothing like your ultra supporters or hooliganism and all that rubbish.) There were the “butoh” chants. The “referee kayu” chants. The amateurish quality of the football simply made everything more down home and endearing. You always knew that somebody somewhere was being bribed, but you didn’t care because you couldn’t tell who was being bribed.

That’s why I never understood why Celtic and Rangers don’t participate in EPL. Think about the excitement if you could have Man U vs Rangers twice every year.

Ultimately I thought that the lack of familiarity killed the interest in the current Singapore team. It’s not as though the Singapore team of the Tiger Cups was lacking in drama. 2005, nobody gave Singapore a chance. But once we were in the semis, we could win it. Who could forget those tempestuous matches against the Burmese, one of which was played in a mudbath, and Myanmar ended up with 8 men? (I mean amongst the very few who watched it.) Who could forget the final against Indonesia, which was played in the Senayan stadium, one of the most intimidating venues in all of SE Asia? And who could forget Singapore and Thailand at the National Stadium 2 years later (I was there), when the Thailand team walked off in protest after Singapore won a penalty? The drama was certainly there.

But at the same time, the Singapore side was painful to watch. This Singapore side, more than the 1994 side, epitomises just what Singapore is about. Clean, efficient, cosmopolitan. But not much soul. Hardworking to a fault. Whereas the 1994 side had more talent, and sought to emulate Man U in the way they played attacking football, the Singapore side of the Tiger Cups was content to put up a firm defence, and then break out efficiently and score counter attacks. We watched them, knowing full well that the Indonesians, the Thais, even the Burmese had more talent that we did, even with our imports. We just had the better coach, the better tactics. Indonesia could have won the Tiger Cup in 2005, but their coach committed suicide (wtf was Peter Withe thinking?) and played 4 strikers at the beginning. That plan failed miserably when Singapore quickly went ahead, and the rest of it was just preserving our lead.

And another factor was simply this: we didn’t know the sides that well. There was a lack of familiar faces on both sides. I couldn’t pronounce the names of many of the Thai players.

I guess that Singapore was a legend in the Malaysia Cup anyway, and it was always about winning something that belonged to us. For Singapore to dominate the Tiger Cup the way it has, so far, there’s something fishy. And not only is this about the prestige of the Tiger Cup (it’s not very established).

And why hasn’t this Tiger Cup side been firmly established in our minds? Because the S-League, since it inception had to contend with 2 formidable obstacles. First, there’s no tradition. Why should a team from Toa Payoh be fighting a team from Bishan? In the end , there were only 5 regional teams left, after the rest of them (Sembawang, Tanjong Pagar, Paya Lebar, Ponggol etc) folded through lack of support and inept management. They were Balestier Khalsa (actually a merger of Balestier and Clementi teams), Tampines, Woodlands, Gombak and Geylang. At the S League inception, you’d have expected Geylang to dominate the S-League, given their illustrous history, but that didn’t happen. Instead the police and the army sides dominated the S-League. Rounding up the rest of the league are the Young Lions, the U-23 team, and feeder sides from Japan, Korea and China.

I guess you didn’t see the S-league as an actual event unto itself, but rather as a training ground for either the Singapore national team or the parent clubs of Abirex / Super Reds / Dalian who were using the S-League as a talent feeding system.

I couldn’t see myself as a fan of Dalian. Sure, those guys live in my block. But I never chatted them up, owing to a lack of faculty with the language, and their thick Manchurian accents. Some of them hang out at crazy hours - watching Euro 08 at the nearby McDonald’s. 1 or 2 I saw smoking. Footballers don’t smoke! So I hope he was a coaching staff or whatever. I don’t know. You don’t smoke unless you’re Michel Platini.

The other, far more formidable obstacle was the EPL. Whereas the English league and the Malaysia Cup had always co-existed side by side with a form of parity, the EPL was even more of a formidable competitor. Yes, the standard of football was slightly better from the old English League days, even as English Clubs hadn’t dominated the European Cups like they used to - but maybe they are starting to dominate it already, who knows? But it was definitely much better marketed, and the good teams always won. Which means you can have a favourite team who’s always doing well and never have to switch allegiances, unlike, say if you were a fan of Nottingham Forest, Leeds or Derby County.

But premiership footballers are a much less attractive breed. Yes, they have personalities, like Roy Keane or Robbie Fowler, but even those personalities are getting blander. Steven Gerrard - nice boy you want to bring home to mother. Frank Lampard - nice boy you want to bring home to mother. Fernando Torres - nice boy you want to bring home to mother. Theo Walcott - nice boy you want to bring home to mother. David James - nice boy with afro you want to bring home to mother. Cristiano Ronaldo - clean cut, whiny asshole who acts all the time. Didier Drogba, whiny asshole who acts all the time.

Arsenal - that most English of clubs, has Theo Walcott, English striker, but other than that: Almunia, Spanish Goalie. Sagna, French / African left back. Senderos - Swiss defender. Kolo Toure - Ivorian defender. Fabregas - Spanish midfielder. Justin Hoyte - English. Rosicky, Czech. Van Persie - Dutch. I think I made my point.

So, same thing as our “national” team - not really English. Then why do they fly the English flag in Europe? Goodness knows.