August 9, 2004

There appeared to be a new philosophy in Singapore football with a new national U21 team to be formed as FAS realized the need to enlarge the pool of talented young players

The aim in forming the new age-group team — to be coached by national and Young Lions assistant coach Fandi Ahmad — is to nurture a larger pool of players for future South-east Asia (SEA) Games & Olympic qualifiers.

The under-21s are the fourth national age-group team introduced by the Football Association of Singapore (FAS) this year. The others are the National Football Academy (NFA) U14 (in conjunction with the Singapore Sports School), U15 & U17 teams. The FAS also have U16, U18 & U23 teams in their set-up — all to ensure a steady flow of talent into the senior national squad, ultimately.

Fandi is delighted with the development as he said the U21s will provide continuity between the U18 & the U23 teams, which is something that Singapore have been lacking.

The U21s are part of FAS long-term plans for the 2007 SEA Games & the qualifiers for the 2008 Olympics following in the football steps of other countries like Japan, China, South Korea & Saudi Arabia who all have such plans for years. Over 50 players, mostly from the 13 Prime League squads, have been invited for trials, which will run to Sept 1 & the squad will be ultimately trimmed to 25.

The U21s will train once a week for the rest of this season, with participation in overseas tournaments & friendly matches planned for next year.