New coach Satria enjoying academy attachment

Tam Cheong Yan
info@sleague.com

For seven years, Satria Mad has diligently served Tampines Rovers as a wingback on the playing field, patrolling the right flank with zeal and industry.

This year, the No.4 has found himself taking on an extra role with the Stags, as a coordinator and coach with the club’s youth academy.

The Tampines Rovers Football Club Soccer Academy, as it is formally known, has been part of the club setup since it was formed in 2003, the brainchild of club chairman Teo Hock Seng and goalkeeper coach Lim Chiew Peng.

Now into its seventh year, the academy has grown under the care of the club’s officials, who have from time to time enlisted the help of players to teach the boys football skills.

The newest addition to the coaching panel is Satria, who had earned his AFC ‘C’ Licence in coaching several years ago but never had a chance to put his learning into practical use.

That chance has now come for the 31-year-old, who has been spending Sunday mornings and evenings at the academy’s training field behind Tampines Stadium every week since 1 March.

Working together with staff coaches Narong Saiket and Hyrizan Jufri, as well as volunteers like Yunos Samad and A. Rangasamy, Satria was clearly enjoying his new job when sleague.com recently paid a visit.

“To tell you the truth, I’m still new to the idea of running an academy,” he said candidly.

“The club management asked me to take over the role this year, to see if I can cope with the work here while playing full-time. I guess it’s the club’s way of looking out for my welfare and my future.

“It has been a big learning experience for me, and one thing I have learnt is that there is a lot of work to do and a lot of sacrifices to be made running an academy. If doing a relatively small project like this takes so much work, imagine running a whole club office!

“Luckily this academy has many veterans running it for the last six years, all of them dedicated to developing youngsters. You never know, maybe out of the 100 or so boys, you may discover one Fandi Ahmad.

“Never mind one Fandi Ahmad, it is not easy to find one Aliff!” he then joked, referring to teammate Aliff Shafaein, the diminutive forward dubbed “The Little Master” for his outstanding on-the-ball technique.

“We get lots of Aliffs in terms of size. Now, we are hoping to find and develop an Aliff in terms of talent!”

Unearthing somebody of Aliff’s calibre may take a while yet, but the academy has not fared too badly in its time, having produced two Singaporean representatives in the ongoing Asian Youth Games in Jeffrey Lightfoot and Adri Adnan.

Having seen the other coaches nurture such bright talents, Satria knows the academy has set itself some high standards to live up to, particularly among parents who may have high expectations.

Fortunately for the newcomer, the pressure has not been on him as he continues to find his feet working with the younger boys.

“I’ve had some feedback about my work, both the good and not-so-good,” he said when asked about how parents have responded to his coaching.

“As a professional player, I’ve to learn to talk to the children at their level. But I think the club sees me as someone who is quite vocal and who can mix with kids, so they put me in charge of the Under-8 and Under-10 groups while the veterans work with the older boys.

“The easy thing about working with kids is they listen, and they like to listen. But their attention span is very short, so you have to keep repeating yourself and be patient.

“So far, I’m happy that the academy is doing well. It has been an enriching experience, and when you see the kids doing what you have taught them to do, you can feel a great sense of satisfaction.”

Apart from putting the boys through weekly training sessions, the academy also organizes its own tournaments and sends teams to take part in competitions held by other organizations, such as Northeast CDC and Singapore Cricket Club.

Boys who do not get to feature in these tournaments can also have their chance to play in specially-organized friendly matches with other football academies, thus ensuring that all of them can enjoy themselves.

The academy’s good work has drawn positive feedback from many participants’ parents, including systems analyst Allan Umandap.

The 32-year-old Filipino, who has been working in Singapore for the last three years, enrolled his 12-year-old son Whilce into the programme in June this year after the boy had learnt of the programmes from his schoolmates at Tampines North Primary School.

Mr. Umandap was visibly pleased as he watched Whilce, who plays for his school, mix comfortably with the 80 or so other boys despite being one of the newer faces at the academy.

“My son picked up football after he came to Singapore, and I thought that since he likes the sport, I’ll support his wish to come here,” he told sleague.com.

“I’m very happy to see him play with the kids here, and I can see he’s enjoying it. That’s really important.

“Actually, he’s always been telling me that he wants to train hard here, so that when he goes back he can play for the Philippines. The training here is better than what we can find back home, and if he does well, he can find opportunities when he goes to college.”

Like Mr. Umandap, technician Mok Kar Loon and his wife spend most Sunday mornings following the training sessions held by the academy.

Their 9-year-old son Shao Yang had completed the first three-month term this year, which was held from March, and has gone on to enroll for a second term.

“My son likes the sport; he’s started watching football since he was five,” revealed Mr. Mok.

“I then found out about this academy when I was surfing the Internet. I decided to have a look at the programme, and I found that it was better than what I initially expected.

“My son was shy about joining at first, but he enjoyed it very much, so we signed him for a second term. He even wanted to pay the registration fees himself instead of letting us pay for him!

“He’s now more outspoken when he is playing, and I can see he’s learnt to make more friends and work with people better. He’s also learnt to read the game better when I bring him to watch games, mostly over here when we watch Tampines Rovers.”

Mr. Mok is not the only parent who has brought his child to Tampines Stadium on S.League matchdays, as sleague.com has learnt. And that can only be good news for Tampines, who enjoy one of the highest average home attendances in the league.

The support from people who participate in the club’s programmes is an important part of the club’s wider plan to increase awareness of and interest in the Stags, as Narong, who also works with the club’s Centre of Excellence, explained.

“The Chairman hopes that, through the academy, we can also promote our team to the children and their parents,” he said.

“We make passes for the children who join the academy so they can come to our S.League matches. When the children want to come, their parents will bring them to the matches, so the parents are also here to watch us.”

“I’ve never taken business management courses when I was in school, but I’ve learnt things like this through working in the academy,” added Satria.

“As players, we used to ask a lot about our pay and our bonuses, but we never knew where all the money or all the fans came from. Now, as a part of the academy, I have come to appreciate what the club is doing not just for the future, but also for us.”

For more information on the Tampines Rovers FC Soccer Academy, please click here.

Tampines Soccer Academy’s boys will feature in a friendly match on 10 July at Jalan Besar Stadium, where they will play against a Global Football Academy team coached by Satria’s teammate Akihiro Nakamura.

Don’t miss the kids in action in the match, which will be a curtain-raiser to the Stags’ highly-anticipated Great Eastern-YEO’S S.League match with Bruneian side DPMM FC