Sometimes you got to watch the shit that comes out of your mouth. Like for some reason when having lunch with colleagues we were discussing some illegal club which had a striptease act. Then somebody brought up the prospect of my becoming a stripper in front of a female colleague (call her Edna Mode), and asked me if I dared to do a strip show. So I said, if she dares to watch, I will dare to strip.
Well as it turns out I have been forced to make good on my word. I'm still trying to work out a set of circumstances that will make things less embarrassing for me. Still looking for a time when all the bosses will be away, and will try to ban any form of photography from the event.
OK, last paragraph was written way back in March. Well I can't remember why there was no striptease there and then. The second time around, I wanted a colleague there to be a mediator. Let's call him fat boy. Fat boy wasn't around. And after that the thing lapsed.
A few months passed, interspersed with long periods where I was not in the office. I was away for a total of 5 weeks, due to a long vacation and a stint at ICT. So on the first day I came back from ICT, somebody brought it up again. So I said to Edna, let's go to the computer lab, and then I'll strip for you. Then she followed me there, half expecting me to chicken out, I think.
It was over very fast. By the time I had half of my shirt undone, she ran out, covering her eyes, yelling, "somebody strike me blind! I can't watch this ugly fuck!".
Well it's been conclusively shown that she's the one who daren't watch, rather than me who daren't strip. Final score: numbernine 1, Edna Mode 0.
Moral of the story: don't fuck with numbernine.
Thursday, 14 August 2008
Sunday, 10 August 2008
Emmanuel Goldstein
I think we've all had briefings about the conduct of anti-terrorism operations. We've had to do anti-terrorist operations that might result in somebody's death, and a few days before we started, there was a talk by a psychologist from the civil service.
I thought it was going to be very similar to the talk that I was given 3 years ago when we had the same operation, but I think that they've revised it. 3 years ago, it was just somebody talking to us, asking us if we had compunctions about killing a man when we had to. It was more simple. Now, they had this pep talk where they tell us about the larger socio-political context of terrorism in our region. As somebody who reads a fair bit about terror, I thought I would say some things about what was being mentioned in there.
I didn't expect everything being said to be true or accurate. It's sad but we don't completely trust our government these days. My memory of the talk is hazy because it took place a few days ago but I did jot down a few points that I disagreed with.
The talk seems to imply that Al Qaeda is still active. In a way yes and no. The original Al-Qaeda has not been captured, but they have been rendered ineffective. Most of the terror comes from offshoots of Al Qaeda. It's just like everybody uses IBM compatibles, but not actually IBM computers. And that is why it is not so easy to call the conflict against terror as a "war" because wars as we understand them involve treaties between well defined entities like governments. Terrorism is a guerilla war. Agents of terror are not Al Qaeda themselves, but rather they are spin offs, and organisations which take the example of Al-Qaeda. It's like Al-Qaeda is McDonald's and JI is Burger King. McDonald's invented the concept and the organisational structure of the fast food restaurant, and the rest followed in its stead.
The implications are slightly different because this is not a limited war. There is only 1 way to defeat terrorism, and that is for the terrorists themselves to give up. As of now, there is reason to believe that terrorism is on the wane because people see no point in blowing themselves up when the lives of people in rich countries go on as before.
They talked about examples of terrorism in the world. Nobody mentioned the Jackal or Baader Meinhoff, but they talked about the PLO and the IRA. Strangely enough nobody mentioned the Haghanah. Nobody mentioned that Israel used terrorist tactics against the British in order to obtain their independence.
We went into the reasons for terrorists to attack Singapore. One of the reasons is our ties to the USA. The psychologist outlined correctly one of the reasons why the Arabs don't like the USA: they just come over and take over all the oil and try to get it for as low as they can. But the other reason is something they didn't mention: the USA unconditionally supports Israel, even though they have a very unfair advantage over Palestine. People think about Israel getting terrorist attacks all the time, but they don't really ask too many questions why. A large part is that Israel doesn't have the balls to ask their own people to stop building settlements in the occupied territories.
This injustice is one of the main things that terrorist preachers pick on, rightly or wrongly to convince people that the world is out to get them. Whether it is a legitimate reason is something else but the more important point is that it is something that people can pick on.
Another point they keep on emphasising is that Singapore is not resiliant. Terrorist attacks will have a great adverse impact on Singapore. True, New York and London may have recovered from their respective terrorist attacks, but Singapore might not.
Now this is offensive. We all know that governments milk the terrorist threat for what it's worth: you need us. You need to give up your civil liberties and your rights to us so that we can better protect you from the devil that is out there. Now Singapore goes one up and exaggerates the impact of something that has yet to happen. These things don't work if you don't ratchet up the fear factor up one notch. Ever heard of a city that has been destroyed by a terrorist attack? You could kill 3000 people in NYC and life still goes on. This is the ultimate disillusionment of the terrorist: that life still goes on.
To be sure, there are cities which have shown to be in unmistakable states of decline. Detroit. Los Angeles. Pittsburgh. Marseille. We know that a city can surely fall as it can rise. But terrorists cannot destroy us. Possibly a declining economy can. Are we more vulnerable than Bali, Madrid, Tel Aviv? Are they saying that Singaporeans are soft? Is this a self fulfilling prophecy?
The rise of China is unfortunate for us, actually. One of the worst things to happen to us if the Uighurs were to start becoming terrorists. Whereas in the last 10 years terrorists have been targeting angmohs and their own fellow Arabs (wtf?) now they will be targeting Chinese as well.
But it hasn't happened yet. The US is slowly winning Iraq, and for now terrorism is on the wane. It's been something less compelling this time than 3 years ago. Of course it's a useful exercise for us to go and test ourselves with an exercise. But I just feel quite uncomfortable noting that long after the threat is gone, they will still go on putting us on exercises like this.
I thought it was going to be very similar to the talk that I was given 3 years ago when we had the same operation, but I think that they've revised it. 3 years ago, it was just somebody talking to us, asking us if we had compunctions about killing a man when we had to. It was more simple. Now, they had this pep talk where they tell us about the larger socio-political context of terrorism in our region. As somebody who reads a fair bit about terror, I thought I would say some things about what was being mentioned in there.
I didn't expect everything being said to be true or accurate. It's sad but we don't completely trust our government these days. My memory of the talk is hazy because it took place a few days ago but I did jot down a few points that I disagreed with.
The talk seems to imply that Al Qaeda is still active. In a way yes and no. The original Al-Qaeda has not been captured, but they have been rendered ineffective. Most of the terror comes from offshoots of Al Qaeda. It's just like everybody uses IBM compatibles, but not actually IBM computers. And that is why it is not so easy to call the conflict against terror as a "war" because wars as we understand them involve treaties between well defined entities like governments. Terrorism is a guerilla war. Agents of terror are not Al Qaeda themselves, but rather they are spin offs, and organisations which take the example of Al-Qaeda. It's like Al-Qaeda is McDonald's and JI is Burger King. McDonald's invented the concept and the organisational structure of the fast food restaurant, and the rest followed in its stead.
The implications are slightly different because this is not a limited war. There is only 1 way to defeat terrorism, and that is for the terrorists themselves to give up. As of now, there is reason to believe that terrorism is on the wane because people see no point in blowing themselves up when the lives of people in rich countries go on as before.
They talked about examples of terrorism in the world. Nobody mentioned the Jackal or Baader Meinhoff, but they talked about the PLO and the IRA. Strangely enough nobody mentioned the Haghanah. Nobody mentioned that Israel used terrorist tactics against the British in order to obtain their independence.
We went into the reasons for terrorists to attack Singapore. One of the reasons is our ties to the USA. The psychologist outlined correctly one of the reasons why the Arabs don't like the USA: they just come over and take over all the oil and try to get it for as low as they can. But the other reason is something they didn't mention: the USA unconditionally supports Israel, even though they have a very unfair advantage over Palestine. People think about Israel getting terrorist attacks all the time, but they don't really ask too many questions why. A large part is that Israel doesn't have the balls to ask their own people to stop building settlements in the occupied territories.
This injustice is one of the main things that terrorist preachers pick on, rightly or wrongly to convince people that the world is out to get them. Whether it is a legitimate reason is something else but the more important point is that it is something that people can pick on.
Another point they keep on emphasising is that Singapore is not resiliant. Terrorist attacks will have a great adverse impact on Singapore. True, New York and London may have recovered from their respective terrorist attacks, but Singapore might not.
Now this is offensive. We all know that governments milk the terrorist threat for what it's worth: you need us. You need to give up your civil liberties and your rights to us so that we can better protect you from the devil that is out there. Now Singapore goes one up and exaggerates the impact of something that has yet to happen. These things don't work if you don't ratchet up the fear factor up one notch. Ever heard of a city that has been destroyed by a terrorist attack? You could kill 3000 people in NYC and life still goes on. This is the ultimate disillusionment of the terrorist: that life still goes on.
To be sure, there are cities which have shown to be in unmistakable states of decline. Detroit. Los Angeles. Pittsburgh. Marseille. We know that a city can surely fall as it can rise. But terrorists cannot destroy us. Possibly a declining economy can. Are we more vulnerable than Bali, Madrid, Tel Aviv? Are they saying that Singaporeans are soft? Is this a self fulfilling prophecy?
The rise of China is unfortunate for us, actually. One of the worst things to happen to us if the Uighurs were to start becoming terrorists. Whereas in the last 10 years terrorists have been targeting angmohs and their own fellow Arabs (wtf?) now they will be targeting Chinese as well.
But it hasn't happened yet. The US is slowly winning Iraq, and for now terrorism is on the wane. It's been something less compelling this time than 3 years ago. Of course it's a useful exercise for us to go and test ourselves with an exercise. But I just feel quite uncomfortable noting that long after the threat is gone, they will still go on putting us on exercises like this.
Saturday, 2 August 2008
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.
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
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.
Saturday, 26 July 2008
Greedy Asshole
I met a friend I hadn't seen in a long time, at - where else? - a wedding dinner. He was working at some really big consulting firm, which was (in)famous for making their junior consultants work ridiculous hours.
This friend of mine had this occasional meeting with the head of the (SouthEast Asia + a few other countries) region. They were asking questions about the company, when my friend piped up with one of the great career ending questions of all time:
"Why do you pay yourself so much when you pay us so little? Why do we get paid so little when (company name) earns so much?"
The table was silent for a little while and all the eyes were on him. The region head looked at the guy and launched into typical bullshit justifications. The company needs the money to invest in the machinery - the backends, the set ups, the stores of knowledge with which you need to run a proper consulting firm. The proceeds from the business get ploughed back into the company and it enables you to participate in more projects.
Yes, yes, yes. But that does not answer the question about why staff remuneration is so skewed. Maybe people don't realise it but I once saw a graph that charted the ratio between the CEO's pay and the lowest paid employee of the firm. They did a nationwide survey in the US, and it was found that whereas in the 60s the ratio was about 1:40, the latest average ratio was something like in the hundreds or the thousands.
I mean, do people seriously believe that feudalism is dead just because the French Revolution took place?
But what the region head said at the end of his argument was more shocking than anything my friend said. He said, "I've been working here for 27 years and I've never been happy with my salary".
I see. So that's why you've been paying yourselves so much, you greedy assholes?
But here I want to qualify what I meant by "career suicide". Anyway it was somebody else at my table who brought up the idea that a statement like this was career suicide.
What is worse, making a statement like the one my friend made, or just sitting back, handing power over to your boss, based on the notion that criticising the amount of money that he makes is career suicide? Is speaking out a greater sin, or the collective human behaviour that turns all of us into willing slaves? There are so few of them, and only hundreds of us. What is this mysterious force that stops us from getting together and hounding all of those parasites out of town? If speaking out against them is a form of impertinence, why is this impertinence a greater sin than the injustice that they're getting paid so much more for the same amount of work than us?
This friend of mine had this occasional meeting with the head of the (SouthEast Asia + a few other countries) region. They were asking questions about the company, when my friend piped up with one of the great career ending questions of all time:
"Why do you pay yourself so much when you pay us so little? Why do we get paid so little when (company name) earns so much?"
The table was silent for a little while and all the eyes were on him. The region head looked at the guy and launched into typical bullshit justifications. The company needs the money to invest in the machinery - the backends, the set ups, the stores of knowledge with which you need to run a proper consulting firm. The proceeds from the business get ploughed back into the company and it enables you to participate in more projects.
Yes, yes, yes. But that does not answer the question about why staff remuneration is so skewed. Maybe people don't realise it but I once saw a graph that charted the ratio between the CEO's pay and the lowest paid employee of the firm. They did a nationwide survey in the US, and it was found that whereas in the 60s the ratio was about 1:40, the latest average ratio was something like in the hundreds or the thousands.
I mean, do people seriously believe that feudalism is dead just because the French Revolution took place?
But what the region head said at the end of his argument was more shocking than anything my friend said. He said, "I've been working here for 27 years and I've never been happy with my salary".
I see. So that's why you've been paying yourselves so much, you greedy assholes?
But here I want to qualify what I meant by "career suicide". Anyway it was somebody else at my table who brought up the idea that a statement like this was career suicide.
What is worse, making a statement like the one my friend made, or just sitting back, handing power over to your boss, based on the notion that criticising the amount of money that he makes is career suicide? Is speaking out a greater sin, or the collective human behaviour that turns all of us into willing slaves? There are so few of them, and only hundreds of us. What is this mysterious force that stops us from getting together and hounding all of those parasites out of town? If speaking out against them is a form of impertinence, why is this impertinence a greater sin than the injustice that they're getting paid so much more for the same amount of work than us?
Sunday, 20 July 2008
Long Distance Travel
Was near King Albert Park last night. It reminds me of the time when I took my first long route march. I was in my school’s scout troop, and although I wasn’t really an active member I had to join in the camps to continue our being a scout.
There was this time when we were asked to trek from our school in Bishan to Lim Chu Kang. The route given to us was that we were to go down Bukit Timah Road, up to Chua Chu Kang, and then towards the end of the island, the scout camp in Sarimbun.
Even though I was not particularly close to my fellow scouts, I was good friends with the other people who were in the patrol - I think it was good that people thought me less of a softy after that trek, even though we did cheat by taking a bus ride for the last 4-5 kms. Maybe a better idea would have been for us to be allowed a nap and we could trudge on.
I suppose the first 10 kms would have been the worst because we were still unused to walking in our stuffy scout uniforms, carrying haversacks and maps. And I didn’t know if the shoes I was wearing had adequate protection.
I was probably the least fit of the 4, and we stopped by a place by the roadside to have a nap. Well at least I did, and I’m glad I did. It was probably only 10 minutes but I was fresh enough that for the next 10 kms I was the one pushing them on. Which means they should have taken a short nap too. But then the question would be - who’s going to be around to ensure that the short nap doesn’t turn into a whole night’s sleep?
We passed by a minimart along the way. I suppose at that point it was still a new concept for gas stations to have minimarts. We weren’t allowed to, but we bought a drink each. It was a great feeling to be in there for a while, you can imagine what it’s like when you’ve just walked 10-15km with that stupid haversack.
Then came my heroic part of the trip when I was pushing them forward. Then came the part where we got lost in Chua Chu Kang new town, because it was newly built and our map didn’t have that. The momentum that we had marching up Upper Bukit Timah Road was lost because of that. By the time we reached Chua Chu Kang Road, the sun was high up in the sky, and we just thought, “walk the rest of the way? You got to be kidding!”
Still, it felt like a great achievement. I suppose it completely dispelled the doubt about whether we were able to pull off something like that. The first time is important - if you were to ask a Man U fan what the most important league win was, it would probably be 92/93 when they won it the first time in 20- something years. (Coincidently the scouts trek I took was also in 1993). If Liverpool were to win the league anytime soon, it would also be a great achievement, I suppose, since they hadn’t won it since 1990.
You are probably at your happiest when you’ve just obtained something. After that it would fade slowly over the years - I don’t suppose it’s that impressive when you talk about something that you did 15 years ago.
It was true that some of the battles with the Japanese were fought in the old roads. Lornie Road, Bukit Timah, Chua Chu Kang. We were in the footsteps of the British / Aussies / Chinese / Malay / Indian soldiers. It didn’t occur to me then but it’s an interesting thought now.
So there I was a few nights ago, retracing some of the steps I took 15 years ago. I saw that the place where we lay down to sleep actually used to be the Bukit Timah railway station when it was still operating. It’s just a shame Singapore and Malaysia can’t get along as we can’t have a proper railway service through much of Singapore.
I also went to the minimart near the Clementi / Bukit Timah / Upper Bukit Timah / Jalan Jurong Kechil junction, as well as the food centre next to it. Brought back memories of that trek 15 years ago.
I still remember the other treks I did while in NS. Doing the 8 km, 16 km and 24 km route march, as all army boys do, and marching past Mandai Road where the only interesting thing was that we took a break at a car park next to the zoo.
One 8 km march which was more difficult because we were all carrying around 40kg of equipment each. I remember walking over a dam - I think it was the Seletar river dam. The road being long and straight. It took forever. Then another hike with that 40kg equipment - up the infamous elephant hill. It was shorter but we were screaming bloody murder all the way.
There are the runs, of course. I had the half marathon last year. I don’t know if I can do the marathon this year. At least I know from last year that the half marathon was not a problem at all. This year would be more uncertain, of course. It would never occur to me to run a marathon, but I suppose, since I see people around me who have done it, and since I have reliable jogging partners, why not? It used to be such a big achievement and now every Tom Dick and Harry’s done one.
And after that you would have to go seek new challenges, I guess.
There was this time when we were asked to trek from our school in Bishan to Lim Chu Kang. The route given to us was that we were to go down Bukit Timah Road, up to Chua Chu Kang, and then towards the end of the island, the scout camp in Sarimbun.
Even though I was not particularly close to my fellow scouts, I was good friends with the other people who were in the patrol - I think it was good that people thought me less of a softy after that trek, even though we did cheat by taking a bus ride for the last 4-5 kms. Maybe a better idea would have been for us to be allowed a nap and we could trudge on.
I suppose the first 10 kms would have been the worst because we were still unused to walking in our stuffy scout uniforms, carrying haversacks and maps. And I didn’t know if the shoes I was wearing had adequate protection.
I was probably the least fit of the 4, and we stopped by a place by the roadside to have a nap. Well at least I did, and I’m glad I did. It was probably only 10 minutes but I was fresh enough that for the next 10 kms I was the one pushing them on. Which means they should have taken a short nap too. But then the question would be - who’s going to be around to ensure that the short nap doesn’t turn into a whole night’s sleep?
We passed by a minimart along the way. I suppose at that point it was still a new concept for gas stations to have minimarts. We weren’t allowed to, but we bought a drink each. It was a great feeling to be in there for a while, you can imagine what it’s like when you’ve just walked 10-15km with that stupid haversack.
Then came my heroic part of the trip when I was pushing them forward. Then came the part where we got lost in Chua Chu Kang new town, because it was newly built and our map didn’t have that. The momentum that we had marching up Upper Bukit Timah Road was lost because of that. By the time we reached Chua Chu Kang Road, the sun was high up in the sky, and we just thought, “walk the rest of the way? You got to be kidding!”
Still, it felt like a great achievement. I suppose it completely dispelled the doubt about whether we were able to pull off something like that. The first time is important - if you were to ask a Man U fan what the most important league win was, it would probably be 92/93 when they won it the first time in 20- something years. (Coincidently the scouts trek I took was also in 1993). If Liverpool were to win the league anytime soon, it would also be a great achievement, I suppose, since they hadn’t won it since 1990.
You are probably at your happiest when you’ve just obtained something. After that it would fade slowly over the years - I don’t suppose it’s that impressive when you talk about something that you did 15 years ago.
It was true that some of the battles with the Japanese were fought in the old roads. Lornie Road, Bukit Timah, Chua Chu Kang. We were in the footsteps of the British / Aussies / Chinese / Malay / Indian soldiers. It didn’t occur to me then but it’s an interesting thought now.
So there I was a few nights ago, retracing some of the steps I took 15 years ago. I saw that the place where we lay down to sleep actually used to be the Bukit Timah railway station when it was still operating. It’s just a shame Singapore and Malaysia can’t get along as we can’t have a proper railway service through much of Singapore.
I also went to the minimart near the Clementi / Bukit Timah / Upper Bukit Timah / Jalan Jurong Kechil junction, as well as the food centre next to it. Brought back memories of that trek 15 years ago.
I still remember the other treks I did while in NS. Doing the 8 km, 16 km and 24 km route march, as all army boys do, and marching past Mandai Road where the only interesting thing was that we took a break at a car park next to the zoo.
One 8 km march which was more difficult because we were all carrying around 40kg of equipment each. I remember walking over a dam - I think it was the Seletar river dam. The road being long and straight. It took forever. Then another hike with that 40kg equipment - up the infamous elephant hill. It was shorter but we were screaming bloody murder all the way.
There are the runs, of course. I had the half marathon last year. I don’t know if I can do the marathon this year. At least I know from last year that the half marathon was not a problem at all. This year would be more uncertain, of course. It would never occur to me to run a marathon, but I suppose, since I see people around me who have done it, and since I have reliable jogging partners, why not? It used to be such a big achievement and now every Tom Dick and Harry’s done one.
And after that you would have to go seek new challenges, I guess.
Friday, 11 July 2008
Library sale
The last time I went to the Library book sale, I got a lot of junk that I didn't need. One huge tome on the life of Elizabeth II, which was a good biography of a boring person. Unfortunately the biography of a boring person is necessarily boring. Yes, she was a good queen, even though she was really blur about her own family. Plus she does keep herself very up to date on the matters of state, but she doesn't have to make a lot of decisions or run the country, so there's this issue about how much her life's work is really worth. Plus the author was quite obviously pro-monarchy.
One book on life in Cambodia during the Pol Pot regime. Unfortunately it was too academic and I sold it without reading a page. Instead I got a copy of Philip Short's bio of Pol Pot and that's more like history written with the lay reader in mind.
One book on the life of Hong Xiuquan, who proclaimed himself to be Jesus and later led the Taiping rebellion. Still unread.
Basically a lot of junk to clog up your home with.
So if you want to clog up your home with plenty of junk, do visit the Library sale. Oh, and go early. Friday if possible. If you go there on Saturday onwards you might as well not go.
One book on life in Cambodia during the Pol Pot regime. Unfortunately it was too academic and I sold it without reading a page. Instead I got a copy of Philip Short's bio of Pol Pot and that's more like history written with the lay reader in mind.
One book on the life of Hong Xiuquan, who proclaimed himself to be Jesus and later led the Taiping rebellion. Still unread.
Basically a lot of junk to clog up your home with.
So if you want to clog up your home with plenty of junk, do visit the Library sale. Oh, and go early. Friday if possible. If you go there on Saturday onwards you might as well not go.
Monday, 7 July 2008
Euro 08 betting strategy
(Written a few weeks' ago when I was still basking in the success of my betting strategy)
OK I'm going to take a break from taking a break from blogging.
Today I will outline my strategy of betting in football tournaments.
First, put your money on low risk outcomes. The strategy is not to gun for a high payoff. The idea is that you must maximise your chances of winning. As long as you win, you're doing fine, even though the payoff might be unattractive.
The main idea is to put down what I consider to be 90% certainty bets. Predictions that will come true 90% of the time. Here's a hypothetical example: consider betting that event A will happen 90% of the time. The odds given you are 1.2. Do you take it?
9 times out of 10 you will win, on average. Let's say you bet on this 10 times, and you win 9 times. You paid $100 on 10 X $10 bets, and you takings are 9 X $12 = $108. You win, and you come out ahead. That's great. It's a good way of making money. (But of course the money is meagre, and for me there is greater satisfaction in being right.)
When the bookies at s pool make the odds, they are usually tilted against you in this manner. There is no way to make money by dividing your money on the different outcomes, such that whatever the outcome, you will certainly win. For example, the odds for win, lose and draw are such that you can't divide $100 between them such that all 3 outcomes will result in you making back more than your $100.
No matter. The fact is that on the low end of the riskiness, sometimes the bookmakers will jack up the odds of an event such that it will entice more people to buy them. Let's say that Germany will beat Poland 9 times out of 10, but they can't quote you 1.1 because if they did, too few people would buy the bet. They need a certain number of people to bet on that, because they need to be guaranteed a certain amount of money in the event that Germany does not beat Poland. So what's happening here? In effect, you are selling insurance to the bookies, and they will pay you a premium for that insurance.
So for me, as in telling jokes, so it is with my risk profile. I like to aim low. I like to identify outcomes which are fairly certain.
How do I identify outcomes which are fairly certain?
1. A very strong team meets a very weak team.
When Portsmouth got into the semifinals of the FA cup, I decided that they were going to win it. They were the only premiership side in the semifinals. True, one of their opponents was West Bromwich Albion, who were League Champions, will play in the premiership next season, and probably will not get relegated. But Portsmouth are just a little weaker than the big four, and have great African players and must be considered a vastly stronger side. The odds were 1.75 for them to beat 2 lower division teams and claim the cup. It was the bargain I was looking for. Sure, both victories were close 1-0 victories. Sure, Portsmouth had a poor league form towards the end of the seasons (but I think it was Redknapp telling them to take it easy and save it for the FA cup). But they delivered.
If you bet on a team to lose, make sure that it's not one of those teams with very tight defences and who know how to squeeze the life out of a game and force a draw. The main reason why football is such an unpredictable game is because defence is so much easier than offense. It requires a high level of tactical awareness but comparatively little technical skill. The qualities of a good defender are more nebulous than of other types of players and more difficult to assess.
The last 2 teams which caused major upsets in the Euro championships are also those with good defences. Denmark had an all time great goalkeeper at the top of his form, Schmeichel. Greece had a defence so tight you couldn't pour water through it. Weak teams with good defences perform well in cup competitions because they make the other side nervous. France and Portugal must have been thinking, "oh no what would happen if I were to lose against this lousy side?" when they were playing the Greeks. Then they panic and run out of ideas, when running out of ideas is one of the worst things you can do when you're playing a tight defence.
2. There is the motivation to achieve a certain outcome.
Some matches don't matter. Suppose you were to bet on a match between 2 mid table teams at the end of the season? You couldn't predict the outcome. A group match between 2 teams which have qualified? I wonder if you remember the first time Singapore won the Tiger Cup, also the last time they won it with a team that you could really call Singaporean. Thailand and Malaysia had already qualified for the group, and they saw that Singapore had won its group, whereas Vietnam, the hosts, were second. Because both teams wanted to be second, it was a ridiculous situation where both teams wanted to lose. One of the defenders scored an own goal in that match. As you may recall, both teams were knocked out in the semis and they deserved it.
Or you could be 10 points clear at the top of a league table, and you've already won the title. Who would bet on a match like that? Of course you'd play for pride, but this takes away some of the certainty.
3. Align your objectives with the team.
There are plenty of statistics that don't matter, and in fact all of them don't matter except whether you score more than the other team. That is why I don't like to bet on peripheral things like the half time score, the number of corners, total number of goals, whether the number of goals is even or odd. These things don't count.
What matters is that both teams will want to win, or maybe they will play for a draw, which is why I only bother with the end of the match scores. Who cares about the half time score? Let's say I want to go home from work. You can say with certainty that 1 hour from now I will be home. But since I have 10 different ways to go home, which particular path I take is at my whim and fancy.
Coaches will devise strategies and ration the effort required from their team carefully. Is the opponent a slightly weaker side? Then throw everything at them in the first 20 minutes, try to put 1 or 2 past them, and then sit back and defend for the rest of the match. A slightly older side? Grind them down for 70 minutes, then use your superior stamina to kill off the match in the end. It's harder to guess whether they want the goals to come at the beginning or the end.
As for the number of goals, it is a dangerous proposition. Football matches are like battles, and like battles, everything happens in the heat of the moment. You could have 2 defensive teams playing and suddenly something snaps. An error is made, and the defenders get nervous and make mistakes.
Maradona scored 2 goals against England in a famous World Cup match. For the second goal, he dribbled through the defence and scored, and that is rightly regarded as one of the greatest goals of all time. But if he didn't score with his hand for the first goal, would 4 different defenders make a succession of mistakes that would allow the second goal to happen?
That much being said, if the teams are boring, like Liverpool and Chelsea, you can certainly bet on there being 2 goals or less. It's a good bet.
In the end, though, most of the time a team with greater ability and better organisation will win out. How they win out is not important. Usually you will just want to score 1 more goal than the other team and get all 3 points, and save up yourself for the next match. Even if you could beat the guy by 3 more goals, just do enough to win and look forward to the next match.
4. Cover a lot of event space
I like buying "eat balls". Suppose you think that a certain team was going to win or to at least draw, and even if it loses, will not do so by more than 2 goals, "eat ball" is certainly the thing for you. The bookie will offer the "eat ball" to the supposedly weaker team. But sometimes there are no really weaker teams in the match.
Take the recent Holland - Italy match. I thought that both teams were evenly matched. Both had great pedigree, relatively inexperienced coaches, and fairly troubled qualifying campaigns. I thought that Holland eat ball was a good idea and the game was headed for a draw.
I was wrong. Holland won by 3-0, in a spectacular display of the art of counterattacking. (A feat repeated in the 4-1 demolition of France). That was a little scary: I was dead wrong and something really unexpected happened. But I covered my bases.
Another bet came up for Croatia to eat ball against Germany. The prevailing wisdom was that Croatia was the weaker side but I didn't know - England had underestimated Croatia, so were the rest of the world going to do the same? Yes, they had a lousy first match but the coach seemed confident of himself and even had to remind his dejected players that after all it was a bloody victory what are you worked up about? That reminded me of Brian Clough who, on the night before an European Cup final took all his players to a pub to "loosen them up", and thereafter they won. I had confidence in Croatia because they had a good coach. Good coaches allow their players to relax and keep their mind on the game because they would have done all of the thinking properly. So I took Croatia to eat ball against Germany.
Seems like the handicap was not necessary - Croatia won the match.
Sometimes bookies will offer handicaps that don't really make sense. Buy those things, they are bargains.
5. There is little noise surrounding the outcome.
Sometimes you have a good team which has to perform well but in the end, due to fatigue, doesn't perform. Teams at the top of the table are usually tired after an European midweek. Don't bet on them to win after that, unless it's puny opposition. In a match at a major tournament, one team could be weaker, but they are the hosts with home advantage. That will cloud the outcome and make the bet less likely.
6. The bookie's judgement is clouded by a previous freak outcome.
Betting is like buying stocks, in that if you're not doing it to manage your risk profile, you're taking on somebody else's profit or loss that would otherwise be his if he didn't sell you his stock. If you make money, it's money that could have been his. Betting is a game where your adversary is the bookie. If you are looking to buy shares cheap and sell them high, you are hoping for the person you buy them from to make a mistake, and the person you sell them to to make a second mistake. So fundamentally the tactic is to search for bookie mistake and pounce on them.
Unfortunately bookies don't make many mistakes. Pls note: I said the bookie has to make a mistake, not just offer attractive odds. Only then will it be safe enough to buy. The corollary is that very few bets are ever worth making.
Sometimes bookies will look at histories between teams. That's good for us because history is such a bad indicator of what's going to happen. Did they quote the Portsmouth winning the FA cup at 1.75 because Portsmouth hadn't won a trophy in more than 50 years? Possibly. But I thought that was a mistake, Portsmouth were, to me, 80% going to win. Cardiff was quoted at 5.X to win. Even that would be a waste of money because it wasn't ever going to happen. There was a less than 10% chance it was going to happen and you don't bet on something with a 10% chance unless the odds are 10.
Or a match between Liverpool and Fulham recently. In the previous season, Fulham beat Liverpool to escape relegation. The odds for Liverpool to beat Fulham were quite high, like 1.7 or something. I dithered on buying it, and it was a mistake. Liverpool beat them this time around, and the Fulham team was weaker. (Although Fulham would become a better team as the season went on and eventually escape relegation.)
Then again, Liverpool had just had an European midweek, so it would be against my principles to bet on them.
7. Choose events which are simple.
This is actually an extension of point 3, aligning your goals with that of the team. That is the first thing that any team wants, and what they're all playing for. You don't have to bet on extra, peripheral things happening. Predicting the winner of a tournament is not a simple event, because it is contingent on the strongest team going through a few rounds, when a simple mistake, or a simple off day, or a simple unlucky day could finish it off in any one round. I made the mistake, based on the fact that Ronaldinho, Kaka, Adriano and Ronaldo were playing in Brazil, to bet on them winning the World Cup. They flamed out, I don't know against who. I also made the mistake, based on Argentina's early form, to bet on them winning the World Cup. Neither of them did, so I lost money on that. There were too many strong sides still in the cup at that point. So that was 1 painful lesson for me.
The top scorer is also risky. Over a campaign, it is more predictable but still risky. Injuries or a loss of form could finish off that guy. He may have had a hat trick early on but maybe he won't score again but decide to create for other people instead.
Then again there are times when I break the rule of not betting on outcomes of tournaments, and that is when the winners are obvious. Portsmouth were obvious winners of the FA cup. The EPL will be won by one of the big 4 this season. (Or rather big 3, since you can rule out Liverpool.) In 1995, Blackburn won it. In 1992, Leeds won the old championship, and those were the days when the rich clubs weren't so rich and the poor clubs weren't so poor.
If there are fairly obvious reasons why any 1 of these three clubs - Arsenal, Man U and Chelsea - are not going to win, then you should go out and bet on 2 of them near the beginning of the season. I remember 1 season when Man U had a lot of injuries at the beginning of a season. For me that meant I could go and buy Chelsea and Arsenal to win it, and surely enough, Chelsea won. Similarly, as of now, I would rule out Arsenal for the title unless they get reinforcements. The league belongs to Man U or Chelsea and hopefully at the start of the season the odds are high enough for them to cover each other.
8. Cup competitions
I usually don't like to bet on cup competitions, especially the latter stages of cups. That's usually when you have 8 or 4 teams left and "any one of them could win". There will be exceptions, such as teams which have gotten far in the cup by meeting plenty of weak opposition. But be careful of what you meant by a weak team. Greece in 2004 was not a weak team, and definitely they were not a weak minded team.
By that time the bookies will have a better idea of who's more powerful and will not underestimate sides like Croatia and Holland (and give them handicaps). Also outcomes are more precarious because of a lack of whipping boys and because, late in the tournament, the mental strength (which is harder to gauge) comes into the picture.
Put it this way, I seldom bet on football. I don't like betting on the league because it is always possible for a team to have an off day when they are so many matches to be played. I don't like cup competitions because sometimes you have giant killings going on, and the teams are distracted by the leagues. I like competitions which are dominated by 1 or 2 teams so you can go out and bet on them.
For me, the matches with a high enough predictability are those which are played in group matches of major international tournaments. Possibly the bookies will be more generous in their odds because they want to encourage our hardworking citizenry to become problem gamblers.
Once this Euro championships gets to the knockout phase, it will be more difficult. Then I will have to bet on very strong teams versus very weak teams. And make sure that those weak teams are the ones with soft centres.
I'm not the sort of person who goes for the 50 yard lob. I'm the 6 yard box tap in sort of guy.
My perfect record of betting:
Holland to eat 1.5 against Italy. Won.
(The bookies underestimated Holland)
Romania to eat 1.5 against France. Won.
(The bookies overestimated France)
Portugal to beat the Czechs. Won.
(I felt that the Portugese are strong this year and the Czechs are fading)
Turkey to eat 1.5 against Switzerland. Won.
(Bookies underestimated Turkey, although this was a little risky because Switzerland were the home side. Still Switzerland lost their only decent forward and I consider them castrated.)
Croatia to eat 1.5 against Germany. Won.
(Bookies - and everybody else, it seems - underestimated Croatia, or were otherwise fooled by Croatia's lousy showing in the first match.)
Austria to eat 1.5 against Poland. Won.
(Austria showed they were a strong side (or at least a poison pill) against Croatia, and the bookies underestimated Austria.)
Spain to win against Sweden. Won.
(I was lucky I din catch this match. Spain was drawing until a last minute goal and I was saved by the skin of my teeth.)
Turkey to eat 1.5 against Czechs. Won.
(I have a lot of confidence in the Czechs don't I? I was saved when Turkey pulled 1 back from 0-2 down, although I could not have predicted that they were going to bang in 2 more.)
Austria to eat 1.5 against Germans. Won.
(I believed Austria when they said they were not going to wet their pants against Germany. This is not 1938, where Germany annexed Austria without Austria putting up a fight. But when Germany scored 1-0 and started bombarding the goal mouth this was going to be close. Luckily for me Germany are cock. Update - Germany upset Portugal)
Russia to win or draw vs Sweden. Won.
(I have a lot of confidence in the Swedes don't I? This was against the advise of ppl who told me that the Swedes are better. But Russia have a lot of the St Petersburg people who ass raped Bayern Munich in the UEFA cup final din they? They have Guus Hiddink who flicked England 1 side like a piece of pee sai. So dun pray pray. Update - Russia reached semi's)
OK I'm going to take a break from taking a break from blogging.
Today I will outline my strategy of betting in football tournaments.
First, put your money on low risk outcomes. The strategy is not to gun for a high payoff. The idea is that you must maximise your chances of winning. As long as you win, you're doing fine, even though the payoff might be unattractive.
The main idea is to put down what I consider to be 90% certainty bets. Predictions that will come true 90% of the time. Here's a hypothetical example: consider betting that event A will happen 90% of the time. The odds given you are 1.2. Do you take it?
9 times out of 10 you will win, on average. Let's say you bet on this 10 times, and you win 9 times. You paid $100 on 10 X $10 bets, and you takings are 9 X $12 = $108. You win, and you come out ahead. That's great. It's a good way of making money. (But of course the money is meagre, and for me there is greater satisfaction in being right.)
When the bookies at s pool make the odds, they are usually tilted against you in this manner. There is no way to make money by dividing your money on the different outcomes, such that whatever the outcome, you will certainly win. For example, the odds for win, lose and draw are such that you can't divide $100 between them such that all 3 outcomes will result in you making back more than your $100.
No matter. The fact is that on the low end of the riskiness, sometimes the bookmakers will jack up the odds of an event such that it will entice more people to buy them. Let's say that Germany will beat Poland 9 times out of 10, but they can't quote you 1.1 because if they did, too few people would buy the bet. They need a certain number of people to bet on that, because they need to be guaranteed a certain amount of money in the event that Germany does not beat Poland. So what's happening here? In effect, you are selling insurance to the bookies, and they will pay you a premium for that insurance.
So for me, as in telling jokes, so it is with my risk profile. I like to aim low. I like to identify outcomes which are fairly certain.
How do I identify outcomes which are fairly certain?
1. A very strong team meets a very weak team.
When Portsmouth got into the semifinals of the FA cup, I decided that they were going to win it. They were the only premiership side in the semifinals. True, one of their opponents was West Bromwich Albion, who were League Champions, will play in the premiership next season, and probably will not get relegated. But Portsmouth are just a little weaker than the big four, and have great African players and must be considered a vastly stronger side. The odds were 1.75 for them to beat 2 lower division teams and claim the cup. It was the bargain I was looking for. Sure, both victories were close 1-0 victories. Sure, Portsmouth had a poor league form towards the end of the seasons (but I think it was Redknapp telling them to take it easy and save it for the FA cup). But they delivered.
If you bet on a team to lose, make sure that it's not one of those teams with very tight defences and who know how to squeeze the life out of a game and force a draw. The main reason why football is such an unpredictable game is because defence is so much easier than offense. It requires a high level of tactical awareness but comparatively little technical skill. The qualities of a good defender are more nebulous than of other types of players and more difficult to assess.
The last 2 teams which caused major upsets in the Euro championships are also those with good defences. Denmark had an all time great goalkeeper at the top of his form, Schmeichel. Greece had a defence so tight you couldn't pour water through it. Weak teams with good defences perform well in cup competitions because they make the other side nervous. France and Portugal must have been thinking, "oh no what would happen if I were to lose against this lousy side?" when they were playing the Greeks. Then they panic and run out of ideas, when running out of ideas is one of the worst things you can do when you're playing a tight defence.
2. There is the motivation to achieve a certain outcome.
Some matches don't matter. Suppose you were to bet on a match between 2 mid table teams at the end of the season? You couldn't predict the outcome. A group match between 2 teams which have qualified? I wonder if you remember the first time Singapore won the Tiger Cup, also the last time they won it with a team that you could really call Singaporean. Thailand and Malaysia had already qualified for the group, and they saw that Singapore had won its group, whereas Vietnam, the hosts, were second. Because both teams wanted to be second, it was a ridiculous situation where both teams wanted to lose. One of the defenders scored an own goal in that match. As you may recall, both teams were knocked out in the semis and they deserved it.
Or you could be 10 points clear at the top of a league table, and you've already won the title. Who would bet on a match like that? Of course you'd play for pride, but this takes away some of the certainty.
3. Align your objectives with the team.
There are plenty of statistics that don't matter, and in fact all of them don't matter except whether you score more than the other team. That is why I don't like to bet on peripheral things like the half time score, the number of corners, total number of goals, whether the number of goals is even or odd. These things don't count.
What matters is that both teams will want to win, or maybe they will play for a draw, which is why I only bother with the end of the match scores. Who cares about the half time score? Let's say I want to go home from work. You can say with certainty that 1 hour from now I will be home. But since I have 10 different ways to go home, which particular path I take is at my whim and fancy.
Coaches will devise strategies and ration the effort required from their team carefully. Is the opponent a slightly weaker side? Then throw everything at them in the first 20 minutes, try to put 1 or 2 past them, and then sit back and defend for the rest of the match. A slightly older side? Grind them down for 70 minutes, then use your superior stamina to kill off the match in the end. It's harder to guess whether they want the goals to come at the beginning or the end.
As for the number of goals, it is a dangerous proposition. Football matches are like battles, and like battles, everything happens in the heat of the moment. You could have 2 defensive teams playing and suddenly something snaps. An error is made, and the defenders get nervous and make mistakes.
Maradona scored 2 goals against England in a famous World Cup match. For the second goal, he dribbled through the defence and scored, and that is rightly regarded as one of the greatest goals of all time. But if he didn't score with his hand for the first goal, would 4 different defenders make a succession of mistakes that would allow the second goal to happen?
That much being said, if the teams are boring, like Liverpool and Chelsea, you can certainly bet on there being 2 goals or less. It's a good bet.
In the end, though, most of the time a team with greater ability and better organisation will win out. How they win out is not important. Usually you will just want to score 1 more goal than the other team and get all 3 points, and save up yourself for the next match. Even if you could beat the guy by 3 more goals, just do enough to win and look forward to the next match.
4. Cover a lot of event space
I like buying "eat balls". Suppose you think that a certain team was going to win or to at least draw, and even if it loses, will not do so by more than 2 goals, "eat ball" is certainly the thing for you. The bookie will offer the "eat ball" to the supposedly weaker team. But sometimes there are no really weaker teams in the match.
Take the recent Holland - Italy match. I thought that both teams were evenly matched. Both had great pedigree, relatively inexperienced coaches, and fairly troubled qualifying campaigns. I thought that Holland eat ball was a good idea and the game was headed for a draw.
I was wrong. Holland won by 3-0, in a spectacular display of the art of counterattacking. (A feat repeated in the 4-1 demolition of France). That was a little scary: I was dead wrong and something really unexpected happened. But I covered my bases.
Another bet came up for Croatia to eat ball against Germany. The prevailing wisdom was that Croatia was the weaker side but I didn't know - England had underestimated Croatia, so were the rest of the world going to do the same? Yes, they had a lousy first match but the coach seemed confident of himself and even had to remind his dejected players that after all it was a bloody victory what are you worked up about? That reminded me of Brian Clough who, on the night before an European Cup final took all his players to a pub to "loosen them up", and thereafter they won. I had confidence in Croatia because they had a good coach. Good coaches allow their players to relax and keep their mind on the game because they would have done all of the thinking properly. So I took Croatia to eat ball against Germany.
Seems like the handicap was not necessary - Croatia won the match.
Sometimes bookies will offer handicaps that don't really make sense. Buy those things, they are bargains.
5. There is little noise surrounding the outcome.
Sometimes you have a good team which has to perform well but in the end, due to fatigue, doesn't perform. Teams at the top of the table are usually tired after an European midweek. Don't bet on them to win after that, unless it's puny opposition. In a match at a major tournament, one team could be weaker, but they are the hosts with home advantage. That will cloud the outcome and make the bet less likely.
6. The bookie's judgement is clouded by a previous freak outcome.
Betting is like buying stocks, in that if you're not doing it to manage your risk profile, you're taking on somebody else's profit or loss that would otherwise be his if he didn't sell you his stock. If you make money, it's money that could have been his. Betting is a game where your adversary is the bookie. If you are looking to buy shares cheap and sell them high, you are hoping for the person you buy them from to make a mistake, and the person you sell them to to make a second mistake. So fundamentally the tactic is to search for bookie mistake and pounce on them.
Unfortunately bookies don't make many mistakes. Pls note: I said the bookie has to make a mistake, not just offer attractive odds. Only then will it be safe enough to buy. The corollary is that very few bets are ever worth making.
Sometimes bookies will look at histories between teams. That's good for us because history is such a bad indicator of what's going to happen. Did they quote the Portsmouth winning the FA cup at 1.75 because Portsmouth hadn't won a trophy in more than 50 years? Possibly. But I thought that was a mistake, Portsmouth were, to me, 80% going to win. Cardiff was quoted at 5.X to win. Even that would be a waste of money because it wasn't ever going to happen. There was a less than 10% chance it was going to happen and you don't bet on something with a 10% chance unless the odds are 10.
Or a match between Liverpool and Fulham recently. In the previous season, Fulham beat Liverpool to escape relegation. The odds for Liverpool to beat Fulham were quite high, like 1.7 or something. I dithered on buying it, and it was a mistake. Liverpool beat them this time around, and the Fulham team was weaker. (Although Fulham would become a better team as the season went on and eventually escape relegation.)
Then again, Liverpool had just had an European midweek, so it would be against my principles to bet on them.
7. Choose events which are simple.
This is actually an extension of point 3, aligning your goals with that of the team. That is the first thing that any team wants, and what they're all playing for. You don't have to bet on extra, peripheral things happening. Predicting the winner of a tournament is not a simple event, because it is contingent on the strongest team going through a few rounds, when a simple mistake, or a simple off day, or a simple unlucky day could finish it off in any one round. I made the mistake, based on the fact that Ronaldinho, Kaka, Adriano and Ronaldo were playing in Brazil, to bet on them winning the World Cup. They flamed out, I don't know against who. I also made the mistake, based on Argentina's early form, to bet on them winning the World Cup. Neither of them did, so I lost money on that. There were too many strong sides still in the cup at that point. So that was 1 painful lesson for me.
The top scorer is also risky. Over a campaign, it is more predictable but still risky. Injuries or a loss of form could finish off that guy. He may have had a hat trick early on but maybe he won't score again but decide to create for other people instead.
Then again there are times when I break the rule of not betting on outcomes of tournaments, and that is when the winners are obvious. Portsmouth were obvious winners of the FA cup. The EPL will be won by one of the big 4 this season. (Or rather big 3, since you can rule out Liverpool.) In 1995, Blackburn won it. In 1992, Leeds won the old championship, and those were the days when the rich clubs weren't so rich and the poor clubs weren't so poor.
If there are fairly obvious reasons why any 1 of these three clubs - Arsenal, Man U and Chelsea - are not going to win, then you should go out and bet on 2 of them near the beginning of the season. I remember 1 season when Man U had a lot of injuries at the beginning of a season. For me that meant I could go and buy Chelsea and Arsenal to win it, and surely enough, Chelsea won. Similarly, as of now, I would rule out Arsenal for the title unless they get reinforcements. The league belongs to Man U or Chelsea and hopefully at the start of the season the odds are high enough for them to cover each other.
8. Cup competitions
I usually don't like to bet on cup competitions, especially the latter stages of cups. That's usually when you have 8 or 4 teams left and "any one of them could win". There will be exceptions, such as teams which have gotten far in the cup by meeting plenty of weak opposition. But be careful of what you meant by a weak team. Greece in 2004 was not a weak team, and definitely they were not a weak minded team.
By that time the bookies will have a better idea of who's more powerful and will not underestimate sides like Croatia and Holland (and give them handicaps). Also outcomes are more precarious because of a lack of whipping boys and because, late in the tournament, the mental strength (which is harder to gauge) comes into the picture.
Put it this way, I seldom bet on football. I don't like betting on the league because it is always possible for a team to have an off day when they are so many matches to be played. I don't like cup competitions because sometimes you have giant killings going on, and the teams are distracted by the leagues. I like competitions which are dominated by 1 or 2 teams so you can go out and bet on them.
For me, the matches with a high enough predictability are those which are played in group matches of major international tournaments. Possibly the bookies will be more generous in their odds because they want to encourage our hardworking citizenry to become problem gamblers.
Once this Euro championships gets to the knockout phase, it will be more difficult. Then I will have to bet on very strong teams versus very weak teams. And make sure that those weak teams are the ones with soft centres.
I'm not the sort of person who goes for the 50 yard lob. I'm the 6 yard box tap in sort of guy.
My perfect record of betting:
Holland to eat 1.5 against Italy. Won.
(The bookies underestimated Holland)
Romania to eat 1.5 against France. Won.
(The bookies overestimated France)
Portugal to beat the Czechs. Won.
(I felt that the Portugese are strong this year and the Czechs are fading)
Turkey to eat 1.5 against Switzerland. Won.
(Bookies underestimated Turkey, although this was a little risky because Switzerland were the home side. Still Switzerland lost their only decent forward and I consider them castrated.)
Croatia to eat 1.5 against Germany. Won.
(Bookies - and everybody else, it seems - underestimated Croatia, or were otherwise fooled by Croatia's lousy showing in the first match.)
Austria to eat 1.5 against Poland. Won.
(Austria showed they were a strong side (or at least a poison pill) against Croatia, and the bookies underestimated Austria.)
Spain to win against Sweden. Won.
(I was lucky I din catch this match. Spain was drawing until a last minute goal and I was saved by the skin of my teeth.)
Turkey to eat 1.5 against Czechs. Won.
(I have a lot of confidence in the Czechs don't I? I was saved when Turkey pulled 1 back from 0-2 down, although I could not have predicted that they were going to bang in 2 more.)
Austria to eat 1.5 against Germans. Won.
(I believed Austria when they said they were not going to wet their pants against Germany. This is not 1938, where Germany annexed Austria without Austria putting up a fight. But when Germany scored 1-0 and started bombarding the goal mouth this was going to be close. Luckily for me Germany are cock. Update - Germany upset Portugal)
Russia to win or draw vs Sweden. Won.
(I have a lot of confidence in the Swedes don't I? This was against the advise of ppl who told me that the Swedes are better. But Russia have a lot of the St Petersburg people who ass raped Bayern Munich in the UEFA cup final din they? They have Guus Hiddink who flicked England 1 side like a piece of pee sai. So dun pray pray. Update - Russia reached semi's)
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