\n<\/p>\n
The Lions also need one other thing.<\/p>\n
In this edition, all of the Lions\u2019 home games were held at the nearly 6,000-seater Jalan Besar Stadium. The 55,000-seater National Stadium was unavailable due to the National Day Parade. When tickets for the eagerly anticipated semi-final against Thailand were snapped up almost immediately after going on sale, fans were understandably disappointed.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t the fault of the Football Association of Singapore (FAS) – they don\u2019t own any grounds and unfortunately, the National Stadium has multiple priorities. It would have also been difficult to truly know if we would have seen 50,000 fans for every home game, like what it used to be during the Malaysia Cup glory days.<\/p>\n
Perhaps, however, the time has come to rethink exactly how important football is to this nation.<\/p>\n
Yes, Singapore is land scarce, and I\u2019m not advocating a stadium that is dedicated only to football – but can we prioritise the National Stadium during tournaments and FIFA windows?<\/p>\n
After all, the OCBC Aquatic Centre is almost exclusively for water sports, and the competitive pool is prioritised for national team activities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
A HOME STADIUM FOR THE LIONS? The Lions also need one other thing. In this edition, all of the Lions\u2019 home games were held at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":79037,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dam.mediacorp.sg\/image\/upload\/s--qViWb76B--\/c_crop,h_911,w_1620,x_0,y_148\/c_fill,g_auto,h_676,w_1200\/fl_relative,g_south_east,l_mediacorp:cna:watermark:2021-08:cna,w_0.1\/f_auto,q_auto\/v1\/mediacorp\/cna\/image\/2026\/08\/19\/singapore_v_thailand_aug_18.jpg?itok=Q1oNZkYz","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1126,2472,1703,22,654],"class_list":["post-79036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-news-sg-global","tag-commentary","tag-football","tag-important","tag-singapore","tag-time","wpcat-2-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=79036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/79037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}