Sports Minutes: Is it fair to compare Cape Verde to Singapore?; Anderson Lopes leaves a bad taste after leaving the Lion City Sailors

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
Sports Minutes with Zia-ul Raushan on MoneyFM 89.3.

**Zia-ul Raushan** (0:05)
MoneyFM 89.3, it's time for Sports Minutes with me, Zia-ul Raushan. Now, I'm excited when I jump in front of the mic for all episodes, but particularly excited about this one, because it's a reunion with my broadcast brother, Deepanraj Ganesan. Deepan, welcome back to Singapore. Welcome back to the show, back home after your World Cup expedition. How was it?

**Deepanraj Ganesan** (0:28)
Hi Raushan, happy to be back. Yeah, I think it was wonderful. It's all I ever dreamt of in terms of covering a World Cup.
And I thought that this one was particularly interesting compared to perhaps the previous editions because of all that was going around in terms of the noise, in terms of the fervor in North America, across United States, Canada and Mexico. I'll start with Mexico first. I think that's a few days I'll never forget in terms of the culture, in terms of how rich the fervor towards football was. And of course, the Estetica Stadium, by far, the greatest venue that I have ever watched a football game in, and no less the opening game of this World Cup. And of course, in the US, I think, across the stadiums, the games were all filled, something that we didn't quite expect before the World Cup. And then to talk about particular matches, Argentina, Algeria comes to mind, Messi's hat trick. So yeah, all in all, a very memorable experience, is something that I'll never forget.

**Zia-ul Raushan** (1:27)
Yeah, you talk about memories being made, further memories could be made, because...
Well, the big question, is it coming home quickly now? Is it?

**Deepanraj Ganesan** (1:45)
I suspect it may be, I mean...
You know, I was at the England-Ghana game, if you remember that game during the group stage, and I think the phrase that I used in my story at that time was that all confidence was sucked out of England fans. But that's tournament football for you, right? Where England, I think, have played well in two halves of this tournament. That was the second half against Croatia, and then a bit of football against Mexico, especially in terms of how they defended well. But that's tournament football. You don't have to play well to win matches. I mean, you look at our defending champions, Argentina. Could you say that they were the best football team in 2022 in Qatar? I don't quite think so. I think England will beat Argentina, and then comes France or Spain. I think that's the real one. But I think that's football where it's unpredictable. Now we've got the top four in terms of rankings before the World Cup. But of course, they will all see that, and they had a good chance that they would be in the final four anyway. But I'm excited as a football fan whether it's coming home or not.

**Zia-ul Raushan** (2:49)
The question will remain, is it coming home? The other question to that is, what is home? Because I want to zoom in on Singapore football. You put out an excellent piece that sort of broken the internet in terms of comparisons between a certain Cabo Verde as well as Singapore. We'll dissect the details in a short while. But first, what was the thought process behind putting pen to paper on this?

**Deepanraj Ganesan** (3:10)
So when Cabo Verde were doing quite well at the World Cup, even before they reached the knockout stages, from the moment they qualified for the World Cup and when they were getting good results against the likes of Spain and Uruguay, who of course are two former world champions at this level, a lot of people were drawing comparisons to Singapore. Of course, at the end of the day, population-wise, you can make that comparison, because Cape Verde of course is a country of about 500,000 people there. So people were making a comparison online on social media and saying, hey, if Cape Verde can do it, why isn't Singapore there? Why isn't Singapore doing better than it is? So to me, and I thought that comparison was a bit unfair, and I thought it needed some context.
And look, you've got to assume that most people who watch the World Cup don't quite delve as much as we do into Singapore football, right? Because I think it's easy from a layman perspective to draw the comparison and say, hey, if a country of over 500,000 or maybe 1 million, and we've seen this comparison before with Iceland and whatnot, if they can do it, why can't Singapore? It's not as easy as that. I think you can sort of, and I said this on social media, you can, it's a fair comparison to make in your head, but then people will have to come in and give you the context, and that's my responsibility, right? As a journalist and as a writer to say, hey, let me go and speak to some people, let me get their perspective and you can read that perspective and you can realize, hey, it's not quite a fair comparison now because Singapore is totally different compared to Cape Verde or even Kura Sal, for the matter of fact, who are another small nation who did well. So I think my piece sort of covered most grounds. I mean, you can never do it in a thousand to two thousand word piece in terms of covering every angle, but thanks to the experts that I spoke to, they basically zoned in on the diaspora and why that's different because you look at Cape Verde and Kura Sal, they have relied heavily on a diaspora. You look at Singapore, we are a very different country. I mean, even to get Periyang through the door, I think it's been many, many years now. Even if we are close to it now, it's taken so long. And yes, we are taking some steps towards getting in players of heritage, but it's going to be a long way away. And I think there's a lot of differences that people need to realize. And that was the premise of the piece.