Singapore 0 Vietnam 1

Singapore was dumped out of the competition-formerly-known-as-the-Tiger-Cup. I went to the Kallang stadium thinking that I would watch what I suspected to be the last match at the Kallang stadium featuring the Singapore national football team. This is probably the last match, at least until the next time.

Singapore had played against Indonesia, played not so well and they won thanks to 2 free kicks. In the match against Vietnam at Hanoi, they played not so well too but held them to a goalless draw, which was sorda a good result. Except that not scoring in Vietnam meant no away goals.

Now in the match at Kallang against Vietnam Singapore dominated but kept on firing blanks. I got a bad feeling when they keep on whacking the ball forward but couldn't score after 25 minutes. Vietnam broke away and scored, and that was the end, because the away goals rule means Singapore had to score 2.

No big deal because Singapore would have lost against Thailand if it had gotten to the final. Some people were muttering that maybe this was payback for that match in Vietnam 10 years ago where Vietnam dominated, and Singapore won by a lucky goal, and won its first ASEAN cup. I think people saw that Singapore played properly after having scraped a goalless draw in Hanoi, and was not that sad.

There was crowd trouble at the match. There was the away stand, and the security guards who manned the stand adamantly refused to admit Singaporeans, and just as well. During the match, the viets were falling over like bowling pins, especially when it seemed that Singapore had a good attack going. We weren’t very impressed, and there was a lot of booing of the Vietnamese side. Lots of booing when somebody fell over, because it meant that he was faking it. Lots of booing when one of our guys fell over, because it meant that the Viet cheats were fouling him. Lots of booing when they went in or out of the dressing room, when they were substituted. When, after they had scored the goal, the Vietnamese made the most of a time wasting substitution by strolling off the pitch.

The Viets had a confrontation with the home stand on their right, I found out later that there were bottles thrown at them over the fence that separated them from the Singaporean side. After 5 minutes, they had a confrontation with the fans on the left. I thought at that time: you fight the French, then you fight the Americans, you fight the Chinese, the Cambodians. With all due respect to Fiji, if you were in a desert island in the middle of nowhere you would be fighting yourself. (Actually the American Vietnam war was also a civil war too.)

The Viets are in this match by dint of their having beaten the Malaysians. I sometimes wonder what a Singapore vs Malaysia semi-final would have been like. It would be like the Malaysia Cup once again, although I dare say that the Malaysia Cup has lost quite a bit of its sparkle when Singapore’s not around. I once compared Singapore to Barcelona in La Liga. There’s no more “el classico”. People don’t care about the Malaysia Cup anymore. People probably don’t even care that in the more than 10 years since Singapore left the competition Brunei won it once (!), Perlis twice (!!) and Terranganu once. What is the world coming to…

There’s always been problems in this competition. First was the fiasco of Thailand and Malaysia both in the position of wanting to lose a match against each other, so that they would play Singapore instead of Vietnam. That was 1998, and as it turned out, both got dumped out of the semis after all.

Then there was the tempestuous knock out matches in 2004, which I started following because I sensed that Singapore had a real chance of winning that match. (I was right). It was a terrible semi-final against Myanmar because they kept on fouling Singapore like nobody’s business, and Myanmar ended the match with 8 men (!). The third Myanmese who got sent off got sent off because he kicked mud into the referee for sending off the 2nd Myanmese player. That’s great.

And there was also crowd trouble after the match: there was fighting with the Myanmese workers who turned up at Kallang stadium to watch. But that time it was the Myanmese who were the hooligans.

The victories in 2005 and 2007 were legendary. After 2007 the incredible record is that Singapore and Thailand were the only people who won this competition since it started in 1996, with 3 each. The fact that we are one of two all time great teams in this competition is simply staggering. People don’t mention this because it’s almost embarrassing, almost disrespectful to all the other countries who have populations 10 or 50 times of us. The first win was a shock, but the other two were less so. It’s understandable that people get upset that we won it for the last 2 times, as can be seen from how Thailand walked off the pitch in protest 2 years ago when Singapore won a penalty (which in fairness was a dubious one).

But I liked how in 2005 and 2007 Singapore played 4 different opponents in the knockout phase: Myanmar and Indonesia in 2005, and then Malaysia and Thailand in 2007. There’s a bit more legitimacy to your winning if you knock everybody out.

In this match against Vietnam, Singaporeans were the hooligans too, both sides were to blame. Other than the obvious mistakes in not keeping the Singaporeans in while the Vietnamese left the stadium, there is tension. First was the obvious injustice of the match. Singapore finally lost for the first time in this competition in a long while: never mind that we had been lucky to not lose in Hanoi. I would say that based on both legs, both teams deserved to qualify, but the fact is that only one of them can.

There is also the obvious tension with the migrant workers. Vietnamese people are your fast food servers, hawker centre attendants, bargirls, uni students. There is always tension between the foreigners and the host country, I know because I’ve been a foreign student before. Singaporeans think that the Viets play dirty. The Viets think that Singaporeans are minnows who win too much, that putting Englishmen, Nigerians, Bosnians and PRCs in your team is not completely fair.

But I think that part of the problem is that not a lot of matches get staged in the Kallang Stadium, so there is quite a lot of pent up aggression in the Singaporean audience. When I walked towards Kallang I didn’t see myself as anything other than a Roman going to a gladiator match. People who watch live football in a stadium are always bloodthirsty to some extent.

I would want Vietnam to beat Thailand, for the reason that I don’t want Thailand having more Tiger cups than Singapore. It was easy to suppose that Thailand would just win this competition every year, until Singapore started their amazing winning streak. Let Vietnam win it this time because we once took a Tiger cup that should have been theirs if not for Sasikumar’s legendary shoulder blade. I thought that Thailand was unbeatable, because they have Peter Reid who came very close to leading Sunderland into Europe. As it turns out, Vietnam have just beaten Thailand in Bangkok, and all they have to do is protect this lead in Hanoi and they can win. Yess!!

Update: Vietnam have won the title for the first time.