I have watched the entire ASEAN football championship, and IMHO Singapore was very lucky to win the championship. They were outplayed by Vietnam, trash a very poor Laos, played evenly against Indonesia and Malaysia and was given a poor penalty decision against Thailand, who dominated for most of the two legs. They only won two games, the one against Laos and the Kellong game against Thailand. Skill wise and speed wise they pale in comparision to the other team, what they had over them was discipine (they never lose their cool and have superior teamwork and organisation) and a lot of luck. To be honest I though that the standards of Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Myanmar don't differ by a lot. Singapore was a lot better during the last tiger cup where I could say for sure that they deserved to win and was the best in ASEAN. I guess the standards of our neighbours has improved significantly?
Our boys could certainly be better next time round... but one thing's for sure is that for this time... they simply didn't know how to lose with their kind of fighting spirit, and that saw them through.
That's cause worth celebrating- of course we would like our victories to be easy and clear out victories and not the nail-biting ones that was more or less the kind of matches they played this season.
I think all the nations improved this time round, why should Singapore be the only one? The team that has the real soul searching to do would be the Thais, given they dominated the entire season only to lose their hearts, their minds, their will and their game where it truly mattered.
Let's hope we see better football from all sides next time round.
seriously, they played their best football since, 2005