Daily Lessons from Life 07 January 2011 - National Football Team Disbanded!

"Fri, Jan 07, 2011 Berita Harian - All players from the Lions will be dropped

All football players in the national team will be dropped in regards to their bad performance in 2010.

President of the Football Association of Singapore (FAS), Mr Zainudin Nordin, said that the current standard of Singapore's football is at a disappointing level.

In order to save the situation, changes will be made with focus given in developing young talents in group age of 14-17 years-old and expanding the talent of the current lineup.

The harsh reality and brave decision was revealed by Mr Zainudin in an exclusive interview with Berita Harian on Wednesday."

Interesting leadership decision. There are others who claimed that the existing players were useless, never won anything, etc when this news came out. Personally I agreed with Mr Nordin on the need for renewal. Though I begged to differ on the accusation that the existing players were useless and never won anything!

Lessons for me are:

1. when mutually agreed goals are not meet, we need to find out the causes and deal with them. At the same time, the people who had committed but failed must take responsibilities and face the consequences. Results are fact though we also must recognize the efforts exerted;

2. when we provide feedback to those who failed, it must be specifically on what they have done and the impact create just now! It will invite a lot of push-back and controversies and unncessary argument IF you brought in past failures that were NOT dealt with on a timely basis. Surely no one liked to be thrashed twice, one for the recent failing and one for something that he or she could not even remembered!;

3. pinning the hope on the younger players is natural. At the same time, it will be counter-productive to use the YOG Bronze Medalists performance to set the starting standing as YOG Football Tournament was not world standard as many of the traditional footballing nations did not played! e.g. Brazil, Argentina, Germany, England, Spain - just to name a few of the past World Cup winners! So, be realistic and do not crush the young players with inflated expectations.

Will Singapore football win the World Cup one day? Maybe. Nothing is impossible. And impossible is nothing! Just do it!! (Combination of Addidas and Nike slogans!)