For every huge football tournament, they bound to be many football buddies putting their girlfriends and wives aside to indulge themselves in a few cups of beer while cheering for their favorite teams at the Stadium. Let alone, your favorite teams which you only get to cheer for them in front of your TV every weekend, is here in Singapore under the blue moon!
Barclays Asia Trophy Singapore 2015 ended literally with a Big Bang (K-Pop band’s concert was held at the Indoor Stadium on the same day as Barclays Asia Trophy Final) as crowds’ favorite, Arsenal lifted their first ever Barclays Asia Trophy in their maiden participation by defeating Everton 3-1 in front of 52,000 fans at the National Stadium! So for the past 9 days, what have we learn from this Barclays Asia Trophy apart from knowing Arsenal is the only team which everyone here wants to get close with?
Love is Contagious
What do we mean by that? People are always saying if you love your partner, you love her/his everything including her/his imperfections. In another word, if your boyfriend is a huge Arsenal fan and he loves Mesut Ozil, you will become a huge Arsenal fan and will fall in love deeply with the German player. By saying that, we have a great example during this Barclays Asia Trophy.
Do you recognize the player in the photo above? Well, he’s not an Arsenal player. Stuart MacFarlane, official photographer of Arsenal FC, has been shooting for Arsenal since year 2000. We never knew that the Arsenal fans here in Singapore were so in love with this photographer until we witnessed first hand at the VIP Terminal how popular he was! Amazing, wasn’t it.
Was it because the players were not readily available for any photo taking and this guy with the Arsenal crest happened to be there? Just like what we have explained earlier, love is indeed contagious. If you love the team, you will love anything and everything associated with the team – that includes the photographer. Look at the photo above, everyone just want a piece of him!
Sticking out your tongue make you a Big Star
These tongues are sticking out from our photo album like a sore tongue. Everyone has their own style but we are not exactly sure if sticking out your tongue is considered as one.
Quick research online shows that there are plenty of meanings to sticking out your tongue. In the Western countries, it can be considered as a sign of disrespect but in the East, it is considered as a sign of embarrassment, or simply known as “Oops”! It all goes down to how one interpret the small action.
If you notice, during the Barclays Asia Trophy 2015 there were many players who actually stick out their tongues “unintentionally” during the game. Even Singapore’s most promising footballer, Safuwan Baharudin did that too! So what the sticking-out-tongue players have in common? We concluded that if you want to be a good footballer, a big star like your idol out there earning big bucks on the pitch, you probably can try sticking out your tongue while playing football. At your own risk.
Good first-touch leads to Beautiful Football
After watching the “live” matches at the Barclays Asia Trophy, I think we finally found the key factor which separates our footballers and the Premier League footballers. And that is good First Touch (on the ball).
All the players from Arsenal, Everton and Stoke City have good first touches. Their controlling of ball under their feet are just lovely and tasty to watch. Sometimes, it just made us wonder how hard can that be. Well, to execute a good first touch during a competitive game is certainly not an easy task. A good first touch is a combination of good passer, good receiver with good positioning, immense understanding between players and most importantly, good decision-making. With all of the above, a good first touch will be the start of some beautiful football play on the feet.
Perfect English Is Possible
Former Prime Minister, Mr. Goh Chok Tong launched the Speak Good English movement in year 2000 and for the past 15 years, the campaign did not seems to work, not until this Barclays Asia Trophy – all Singapore football fans were able to cheer and sing in perfect English (with an accent)!
We were at the open training sessions of the Premier League teams’ at the National Stadium together with hundreds to thousands of Singapore football fans who were there to observe the teams trained. Every shot which a player commanded would be followed by a heavy-toned manly “YEA” and every save which the goalkeeper dived to was followed by a very long-”OH”! You turned around immediately and you would see many of the fans had both of their hands up behind their heads in a clearly understood English-disbelieved gesture.
In our S.League game, we thought that the most common cheer would be that air-horn with the Letter-B word but that traditional Singlish cheer went disappeared for a week. In replaced by English songs which most of the times we did not understand a single word. And you think the cheering and singing were the only thing which fitted the Perfect-English-Is-Possible headline, wait till you listen to the fans who attempted to strike a conversation with the players. Unbelievable perfect English – you need some wrather (water)?
National Stadium’s pitch is actually not Huge
National Stadium’s pitch is the largest in Singapore but somehow when Singapore National Team plays on it, regardless who are the opponents, the pitch just look too huge for our players. Just by looking at the pitch it’s enough to exhaust our strength. But when you are watching a game with both teams of equal huge physique, the pitch at the National Stadium does look small for them!
Take a look at players like Everton’s
Romelu Lukaku (1.91m), Arsenal’s
Per Mertesacker
(1.98m)
and Stoke City’s Peter Crouch (2.03m), these are the players who will make the pitch look small. Even a simple swing of the leg by Arsenal’s newly-signed goalkeeper, Petr Cech (1.96m) during a goal kick, the distance of the ball covered is probably twice the distance our average Singapore players’ kick. So in conclusion, there isn’t any huge football pitch but only small player.
Did we mention that the condition of the pitch is much better these days? Well, we have just learn that “this” could be done, isn’t it.
More photos of the all Barclays Asia Trophy 2015, Click Here.
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