Chinese puzzle : elite football participation in Singapore

• Main Author: Lim, Kelvin Wei Liang
• Other Authors: Nicholas Giles Aplin
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/66486
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Football is a national sport in Singapore. Being a state of many different ethnic groups, we were able to draw a good mix of talents from different races. However, as Singapore progressed into the 21st century, there have been lesser Singaporean Chinese playing football professionally. For a race that makes up more than 70% of the population, it should produce more than the current 16 Chinese out of 151 registered first team players in the Singapore League. This study examines why Singaporean Chinese population do not pursue football as a career through an exploratory research. Although there are research done on the pursuit of elite sports, limited studies had been done on a certain race and sport. The researcher identified 4 individuals, all males, through selective sampling to gain newly generated information. They have been involved in the local football scene for many years, very knowledgeable about local football and will provide very important and diverse viewpoints. This study will help increase an understanding as to why Singaporean Chinese do not pursue professional football as a career option. We can then work towards resolving any underlying issues and in the long run, Singapore will be able to benefit from a larger and more competitive football playing pool. However, this is an exploratory research and the factors uncovered cannot be used to generalize for the entire population. Further research should be done with more participants with more varying profiles to identify stronger trends.