Football Association of Singapore deputy president Bernard Tan's treatise on the current state of Singapore football bears a lot of truth (What it will take to make S'pore football great again; July 14).

Why then wasn't there ongoing remedial action by the FAS to help stem its decline in standards?

Hopefully, the current FAS, with its mandate from the clubs, will rise to the occasion and set our football on the path of recovery.

Let's face it: Our football has unabashedly spiralled into the depths of Fifa world ranking, going lower than it has been before.

We are going to sink further unless the FAS conducts an in-depth review of its developmental, training, coaching and administrative programmes, availability of football fields, and the viability of a local league that is floundering, and failing to build up fan support and to be a promising conduit for players to progress into the national teams.

There must be proactive action.

We had a string of good local national coaches during the heydays of the 1980s and 1990s, and a national team that was quite a formidable force, respected and spontaneously invited to regional invitational tournaments, but now we are considered fair game by regional minnows who we used to beat with ease. We have become the minnows!

We cannot expect much improvement or to get our football out of this rut if the FAS still relies heavily on foreign personnel and exclusive foreign clubs, lacks local appeal, and is unable to prop up the S-League at the expense of local aspirants.

It would help to start looking inwards for the solutions to the problems.

George Pasqual