Danger still lurks for the Singapore Under-23 football team in Group B, despite them notching a 2-1 win against Myanmar following an opening 2-2 draw against Indonesia in the 2009 Southeast Asian (SEA) Games football tournament held in Laos.
For both games, the youngest football team in this event had produced Jekyll-and-Hyde performances. In each case, they were in control in the first half, only for them to display panicky defensive performances after the break.
With the majority of the team under the age of 21 (there are only three 23-years-old-captain Isa Halim, Shaiful Esah and goalkeeper Hyrulnizam Juma'at), the competitive inexperience at this level showed.
In their games played, they raced to 2-0 leads each time, all attributed to Shaiful's expert left foot from set-pieces. And it seemed that this was the easiest and only route to score.
But somehow they could hang on to keep a clean sheet in every occasion. There was no idea what head coach Thambiah Pathmanathan addressed the team in the safe confines of the dressing room during half-time, but the Young Lions came out a different team in the next 45 minutes.
The confidence deserted them. Their assured touches on the ball were no more. Passes were all over the place and often straight to a shirt of another colour.
Experience or no experience in senior level professional game, these players became lost sheep wandering around the turf as their opponents gained in confidence with each passing minute. Why could they not maintain their composed game that had the other team on tenterhooks?
Eventually the Young Lions would wilt under the incessant pressure and leak goals, undoing the fine start they had. They were pretty fortunate to get four points so far, but with tougher opponents awaiting especially in the semi-finals onwards, they are now on very thin ice.
Looking further, the four goals netted so far in the competition all came in the first half. Furthermore, two came from the head of centre-back Safuwan Baharudin, another from Hariss Harun and a Shaiful free kick special.
So what were the forwards doing? Is Khairul Nizam really the next big team he is made up to be? Yes, he is fast and pacy. Yes, he holds the ball and dribbles well.
But no, he is no prolific sharpshooter. In the recently concluded S.League season, he only had six goals for Young Lions, a poor return for any forward. Sure, the service he received at club level was not there, making him having to toil and run against bigger and taller defenders in hope most of the time.
However, in this SEA Games, there is Shaiful with his left foot, Shahdan Sulaiman of Home United pulling the strings as the playmaker and precocious talent Shahfiq Ghani. Fazli Ayob was a revelation on the right wing with his overlapping runs behind the defence.
Shahdan in particular had created several scoring opportunities with his pinpoint forward passes, but bore no fruit for his hard work.
Not only did Nizam seem to have left his scoring boots back in Singapore, his positional discipline as a forward left much to be desired. Already at club and school level, he had displayed a tendency to drift away on the wings, not to dissimilar to his more illustrous step-brother Khairul Amri, thus leaving a gap in the centre of attack.
How about the other forwards in the squad? Fadhil Noh saw too little game time so far to make an impression. Shahfiq, who is better off as an attacking midfielder, is no pacy forward and his inexperience showed in his numerous offsides against Myanmar.
No team is rewarded without maintaining consistency and netting goals, so the team have to pull up their socks if they are to extend their Laos adventure or risk being the first sporting laughing stock in the SEA Games.
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