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GOING, GOING, GONE, Sinchi (above) and Sporting Afrique players are no longer in the S-League, while Liaoning's future remains unclear. -- PHOTOS: THE NEW PAPER, BERITA HARIAN, LIANHE ZAOBAO
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THEY were supposed to spice up Singapore's professional league and get fans talking.
The S-League's foreign clubs have certainly done so - though not quite in the way they had hoped.
Stories of ill-discipline, financial troubles - some players earn as little as $100 a month - and now, match-fixing, have set tongues wagging.
Are they worth the trouble? Should the league's foreign legion be told to go home? Or should they be given a second chance?
Football officials here feel they deserve another shot and that they should be given more time to prove themselves.
'There's no need for a knee-jerk reaction just because of one bad experience,' said Singapore Armed Forces FC general manager Kok Wai Leong.
'We should still welcome them, because they add excitement and provide a different brand of football.'
That was the premise set out by the S-League in 2003, when they announced that Sinchi FC would become the first foreign team to ply their trade in Singapore's top-flight league.
The Chinese club made lofty promises: A top-four finish in the league and quality football.
Neither goals were achieved. After three years, Sinchi folded under the weight of poor results and disciplinary woes.
The club failed to finish higher than seventh in their debut season.
The players' tempers also proved to be more fiery than their performances.
Five Sinchi players were banned in 2005 for manhandling a referee during a match.
But the club's former chairman, Wang Jinhui, insists that the team had made significant contributions to the local scene.
'We made the S-League more competitive, even though we didn't meet our targets,' he said.
He added that the team were disbanded only because of the dire state of China's domestic league at the time.
He explained: 'The situation in China was very bad because of match-fixing and corruption. It was hard to get good players, so we decided to pull out.'
Three other foreign clubs who came on the scene after Sinchi fared no better.
African side Sporting Afrique were ninth out of 11 teams in their lone season in 2006.
Last year, Korea's Super Reds were dead last in the league, while Liaoning Guangyuan finished just two rungs higher.
Said Home United coach P.N. Sivaji: 'Some of these teams are not really teams - just players cobbled together from various places.
'You need to get the feeder teams from reputable clubs. Only then can they be formidable.'
Of the five foreign teams to have plied their trade in the S-League, only Albirex Niigata can claim to have been competitive.
The Japanese side pluck promising young players from their parent club in the J-League and have consistently finished among the top eight since they arrived in 2004.
Their fifth-placed finish in the first two seasons is still the highest achieved by any foreign side.
While their disciplinary record has been exemplary, the same cannot be said for the Super Reds. The Korean side chalked up a whopping 17 red cards over 33 games last season.
Wang has an answer for this.
He said: 'Many of the players come to Singapore expecting the S-League to be a piece of cake. When they realised it wasn't easy to win matches, they became frustrated.'
Off the pitch, clubs like Sporting Afrique found it difficult to stay afloat.
Their former chairman Collin Chee forked out $16,000 of his own money each month to keep the club going during their one and only season in 2006.
To cut costs, Sporting Afrique's players were paid as little as $100 a month, after deducting $1,500 for general expenses.
Chee himself took out a $200,000 personal loan to inject cash into the club,
Still, he was forced to disband his team after just one season.
'It was painful,' recounted the former television actor. 'Our main sponsor pulled out before the season started and there simply wasn't enough money.'
Foreign clubs get between $80,000 and $150,000 in subsidies a year from the S-League.
In contrast, local clubs get over half a million dollars.
As such, players in the foreign teams are often poorly paid, with the average salary at around $1,000.
Said a football official who declined to be named: 'With almost no track record in Singapore, not many sponsors are willing to take a risk on these teams.
'As such, they survive on shoe-string budgets, yet expect their players to perform miracles.
'It's no wonder some fall prey to temptations. Basically, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.'
But not all foreign sides have trouble hunting for sponsors.
Albirex - arguably the only foreign success story in the S-League - are backed by Japanese firms like Sanyo and Teraoka.
Said vice-chairman Bogdan Brasoveanu: 'As a foreign club in Singapore, you must have a stable sponsor, clear long-term objectives, good management, and the right people to run the club.'
Albirex, who are into their fifth season, plan to stay. They have developed a strong fan base, comprising both Japanese and Singaporeans, at their Jurong East Stadium.
While acknowledging that the majority of the foreign sides have not lived up to the mark, S-League chief executive officer Winston Lee said Albirex have found the right formula.
He added they are the shining light of the league's foreign-team experiment, which has not entirely failed.
It is estimated that foreign sides have contributed about $15 million to the football industry through areas such as sponsorship dollars, player wages and housing cost.
Last year, foreign clubs contributed $6 million, or about 35 per cent of the revenue generated by the league.
Said Lee: 'They've also provided players for the Foreign Talent Scheme and raised our brand profile overseas.'
Lee noted that the S-League was short-listed last year by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) as one of the top 10 leagues in Asia to be revamped to make them more commercially viable and attractive to fans.
Even Wang, whose Sinchi club failed to make a lasting impression, pleaded for fans to be patient.
'If there are flies in the soup, it doesn't mean that you don't cook soup anymore.
'Give the foreign teams more time, and they will do better.'
tvoon@sph.com.sg
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