Dear Singapore, your girls playing football want more than applause — they want momentum

Dear Singapore,

Yesterday, I saw a girl playing football at a park near my house. It was late, the kind of hour when dinner plates are cleared and day turns to night.

She was alone under floodlights, just her and a football, with her bicycle parked neatly by the park. She wasn’t doing anything fancy — just touches, turns, juggling. Focused. Steady. No phone, no coach, no noise. The quiet rhythm of practice.

I stood there for a while, not to intrude, but because she reminded me of someone I used to know. Me.

On weekdays after school. On Saturday mornings. And the times I had to spare. Sometimes my brother would join me. But oftentimes it was just me and a football — and a big, audacious dream.

You wouldn’t have looked twice at me then. A small, tan-skinned child on an empty pitch. No spectacle. No spotlight. Just one girl believing she could do something that hadn’t quite been done yet.

Singapore, you weren’t built for people like me. Not at first.

Not for the girl who wanted to play football professionally. Not for the girl who said “no” to the expected route and “yes” to a life on the move, on the margins, chasing something as uncertain as it was beautiful.

But Singapore was where it started. Where I learnt to fight through humidity and homework, where I learnt to run harder because no one thought I should even be on the pitch.

Where I learnt that dreams don’t always shout — they persist. Quietly. Daily. In floodlit parks and on concrete courts, in the early mornings and on aching legs. They keep going even when no one is watching. Especially then.

That’s what I wish more people knew about this life. Not the headlines or the milestones, not the signings or firsts. But the in-betweens.

The airports and cold