Sports Minutes: Gavin Lee on picking up the pieces after the pain inflicted by Malaysia, lessons learnt from the FIFA ASEAN Cup and the road ahead to the Asian Cup

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

Sports Minutes with Zia-ul Raushan on MoneyFM 89.3.

Zia-ul Raushan (0:04)

MoneyFM 89.3, it's time for Sports Minutes with me, Zia-ul Raushan. About a week since the Lions were mauled by Malaysia, the winds continue to sting. Not so long ago, we celebrated our Lions, their bravery and bravado after positive results in August at the AFF Championship.

Yet in an industry where things flip very, very quickly, and in an era where the inquest begins, not just on publications and podcasts, but on social media, the time to pick up the pieces and continue to hopefully push for progress needs to happen just as quickly. For that, I'm in the company of Gavin Lee, the man who holds the keys to the engine, a man who has told us time and again to trust the process. But after that bruising night in Bandung, what exactly are we trusting? Gavin, thank you for making yourself available. You okay?

Gavin Lee (0:53)

Thanks for having me.

Zia-ul Raushan (0:54)

Good to have you with us, Gavin. I wish it was in better circumstances. Before we look ahead, I need to look back. Just under a week since that painful, painful defeat, right? What are your memories on how the night unfolded from the touchline?

Gavin Lee (1:08)

Yeah, it's definitely one of disappointment. I mean, very quickly after the game, you could see the hurt that was all around. I mean, I was hurting definitely. The staff was hurting and the players were definitely hurting. And when I reflected on it, I think a lot of the hurt and disappointment came from the fact that, you know, I think we've now got a group that actually really cares. You know, we really care for what we do and who we represent. And every time we put on that jersey or the red shirt, you know, we really want to live in a better place. We want people to be proud of what they see and who's representing them. And, you know, I think along in the journey, we have given people more reason to believe and come on board. And that also meant that when we disappoint, we disappoint even more people and that hurts even more.

But again, we own it. The result is on us. We didn't finish the window the way we wanted to. And now our job is to make sure, again, it doesn't define us and we use it as fuel to keep going again.

Zia-ul Raushan (2:09)

Listeners, if you're tuning in, we're going to look at the FIFA ASEAN Cup in totem, not just the Malaysia result, but sticking to that Malaysia game itself.

Gav, I've known you for quite a while now, from when you were head coach at Tampines to now national team as well, right? On a night like that, how do you even walk into that dressing room and address your boys? Because I cannot imagine what the mood is like.

Gavin Lee (2:31)

Yeah, like you already described, right? It was a, it's a difficult one, you know, especially in difficult moments like these. But like we've said many times internally as well, it's very easy to be a good teammate, a good leader when times are going well. I know it's easy.

The difficult moments are the moments where you see true characters and that's what the leadership needs to come in. And ultimately for me is to, you know, to shut up the noise in my head and suit up, prepare for what the team needs me to do, and then show up, you know, go out there and do what I need. But obviously at that moment, when everybody's quite emotional, it wasn't the best time to speak. And so it's about choosing the right moment to address the team, address the players, address the staff. But we need to speak again with more clarity this time, because last time around, when we spoke to the team, we didn't have enough time to really go through the game and really understand what happened. And because without the clarity, you know, it's just talk. So what we need is to have real clarity to know exactly what happened so that we can potentially solve it the next time around.

Zia-ul Raushan (3:36)

And you talk about needing that time, that space for clarity, right? I understand the window means you lost to Malaysia the night before, you fly back to Singapore the day after.

Has there been time set aside to sit down with your boys already? Is there a date in the calendar?

Gavin Lee (3:50)

Unfortunately, in international football, you've got club football. So the moment we landed back in Changi Airport, they all go back to the clubs, right? So trust me, I think that the mood in the camp was like, we all wish there was a game the day after straight away. You know, we just want to go out there and prove that we're better than this. But unfortunately, we don't. And so we just need to take it in a little bit, deal with it a little bit and then, you know, make sure that when the next window comes, we don't forget what we ran through. We don't forget the pain that we ran through and make sure that we use it again as the fuel to go on and push past barriers.