With over 16 years of experience in sports broadcasting around the region under the likes of ESPN STAR Sports, Fox Sports and dozens of other projects, you can bet that Andy Penders knows what he’s talking about.
The conversation that he just can’t seem to escape from? The sordid state of affairs for local football. In other words, Singaporean armchair critics who love their English Premier League but can’t be fucked about providing some support for their own local teams. Watch Penders rail against their hypocrisy in his video for Red Card TV:
Obviously, the response to his rant was overwhelming. In came the usual deluge of reasonings and rationalizations about how the ecosystem for Singapore football is inherently broken, etc, etc. Penders responded with another video, agreeing that the S-League is pretty shabby — but everyone (supporters, players, organizations) needs to pitch in “bit by bit” to see an improvement. To prove it, he showed how a “lower than non-league” game in the UK was miles more exciting than the recent S-League game he attended:
If you need a summary of why local football just can’t lift off, look to the example of former English football star Jermaine Pennant, who called it quits after nine months of playing in the S-League.
“No matter who you get, you could bring Messi here, yes, you’d attract fans but without money, and the government and the league helping out like they do with other sports, or what they do in other countries, it’s not going to grow,” he opined about Singapore’s football scene.
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