ABSTRACT
The above comment, made in reference to the announcement of the return of Singapore football team to the Malaysia Cup, sums up the current state of domestic football in Singapore. A flurry of interest (in the press and online) followed this announcement (Little, 2013). Given the popularity of the sport in Singapore, this reception might not seem unusual had it been coverage of European football, such as the English Premier League (EPL), Germany’s Bundesliga or even Spain’s La Liga. However, such attention on domestic football has been unprecedented for more than a decade, as it has been struggling to capture both the public imagination and the attention of much of the mainstream media. Over the years, the malaise in the performance and quality of Singapore’s football has been witnessed by its FIFA ranking, which fell from its highest level of 92 in 1996 to its lowest level at 171 in 2016 (FIFA, 2016).
