Proud Moment For Singapore Football

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Good day to all, today marks a day in history for Singapore Football as we have qualified for Asia Cup for the first time by merit. Singapore used to qualify for Asia Cup in 1984 but that was because we were the host nation. However this time round is different, the team played well and created this historical moment for Singapore Football.

Match Recap

Singapore came into this group with Bangladesh, India and Hong Kong. With the decisive one that send Singapore through to qualifying for the Asia Cup decided by tonight's matchup in Kai Tak Stadium in Hong Kong with Hong Kong hosting Singapore for the match.

It was a sea of red as Hong Kong supporters filled the stadium and occupied about 80% of the whole stadium. It was as though Hong Kong was playing with 12 man on the pitch with the fans cheering becoming the 12th man to boost the morale of the home team.

With the sea of red cheering on for Hong Kong, the deadlock was broken in the 15th minute when a cross came in from the right and headed home by Hong Kong striker Matt Orr. And Hong Kong coach decided to change strategy upon securing this goal by changing to a formation that is way more compact and relied on counter attack instead direct open play. And with this tight formation, Singapore was unable to test Hong Kong goalkeeper a single bit in spite of having 3 in-form attackers.

When the 2nd half begin, things changed dramatically as Singapore coach brought on his hidden weapon, Ilhan Fandi, son of Singapore most well known soccer player Fandi Ahmad. A good one-two play with Shawal Anuar, saw the defence being unlocked and Shawal flicked the ball past Hong Kong goalkeeper for Singapore to equalise. 4 minutes later, a step forward into making history happened when Ilhan blasted a sweet left foot drive into the back of Hong Kong's net to bring Singapore ahead.

From then on, it was a case of defending the lead and the defence led by 2 veteran defenders already into their mid thirties, especially captain Hariss Harun displayed so much composure to shepherd Singapore into the full 90 minutes with 7 minutes of added injury time, organizing the defence and making key clearance. And when the final whistle blown, joy erupted from the Singapore bench as the players run out to celebrate with the warriors on the pitch that created history where Singapore qualified for the Asian Cup.

Proud Moment
Singapore is ranked 155 in FIFA ranking for soccer which shows how "good" we are in soccer. We are a small nation that focus on almost everything but sports. When I was young, my mum used to tell me, study hard, get a good job and your life will be good. Don't play sports everyday as it cannot earn you any money and you probably need another job to sustain your finances.

With continued focus in sports development in Singapore, this is a good sign of better things to come where the stigma of being a full time sportsman be broken and as a nation we celebrate these success in sports. We may still be rather poor in terms of our sports, but with more focus on it, maybe in the near future there will be even more success for the nation.

Now that we have qualified for the Asian Cup, this will be our first step to creating more history and time to continue to look towards higher achievement. Who knows some day we might even get a shot at the World Cup.

Closing
It is a joyous occasion for the nation to be able to qualify for Asian Cup by merits and create history. Looking forward to greater success by our Singapore atheletes!

Thank you for coming by and have a great day!

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