Woah

How long was that!?

Okay.

Singapore is starting the defence of their Asean Football Championship crown today against Cambodia. Then comes Myanmar on Sunday, and Indonesia on Tuesday to round up the group stage of this biennial (NOT BIANNUAL) competition.

A few things about this competition:

This is a competition full of change.
2004: Tiger Cup
2007: ASEAN Football Championship
2008: AFF Suzuki Cup

Must be swept up in the change cycle.


Another thing:

There is a qualifying phase, if you don't know (most probably). Since the only change from this year's edition to the previous one is Philippines (single L double P) being replaced by Cambodia. The inexperienced (maybe naive) Laos outfit comes back again.

But you may not know, there are basically 6 seeded teams, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Myanmar (not necessarily by order of merit). And 2 slots to fight for 5 teams.

Quite an acceptable situation, if you are qualifying for the World Cup. Or the Asian Cup. Not this. This, I feel dissuades football in these weaker nations. If Laos maintain their level of football, or improve (most probably since last time round they had a really young team), then there is little chance for the remaining 4, who fight out for the last slot.

Cambodia, Philippines are clearly better than Brunei and Timor Leste. How then?? These 2 nations shall never come back from the ashes??

I remember the surprise element in 2004 when we could see Timor playing. Thye played positive football, not the "Wall strategy" or "Bus effect", where you play ultra defensively for a draw. But that may not work, since you have seen the Wall Street crash despite John McCain referring to it as having 'strong foundation'.

So, well good luck to Singapore, and Raddy's Lions will achieve a cool feat.