Article and Photograph by Song Sung Hai

Tanjong Pagar United FC held our pre-season press conference earlier this afternoon at the Queenstown Stadium where we announced our 3-year partnership with Mitre as our apparel sponsor as well as plans for the 2014 season.

Mr Alfred Toh, General Manager of Mitre/Teamwork Sports LLP, expressed his satisfaction in the partnership with a traditional Singaporean football club.

“As you know, Mitre is a 200 years old English brand, born in 1817 in the UK. Our partnership with Tanjong Pagar United is to promote football development at club level. At the same time, we also want the club to assist Mitre to strengthen brand awareness within the club level and ultimately in Singapore.”

We also took the opportunity to unveil our new foreign signing, Sebastien Etiemble from France, who had previously played under Head Coach Patrick Vallee at AFC Compiegne and was playing with Union Sportive Quevillaise in the French Ligue 3 last season. He has joined to replace Ismael Benahmed who left after last season.

There was also a short jerseys presentation event after the conference ended and fans had the chance to mingle and take photos with their favourite Jaguars.

Head Coach Patrick Vallee revealed how pleased he is with the fine additions to the team this season for the first time and that the atmosphere within the team is good.

“Hopefully we can do better than last season. We have got with us some good players this time and I know they will try to perform better than last season. At the end, it is the mentality of the team, the mindset, that matters to me and if it is good, I am sure the team will perform well,” added Patrick.

Patrick also hopes that his Jaguars will have a little bit of luck on their side this season. Fully confident in the abilities of his lads, he feels with that extra bit of luck, his team can achieve, and maybe, win something.

Elaborating further, Patrick said, “Win what, I do not know. I will not say that this team can win the league or the cup tournaments. My aim is for the team to give their best for Tanjong Pagar United in all tournaments and provide good entertainment for the fans. In short, my only real target for the team is to end the season better than last year.”

A rather upbeat Jaguars Chairman, Mr Edward Liu, though, decided not to beat the bush about and was bullish about the prospects of his investment.

“We want to build on the success of last season where we set a mid-table target and achieved it. I was happy and so were the management committee therefore we will raise the bar a bit this season and set a target of a top three finish,” said Edward Liu in affirmation of his confidence.

Mr Edward explained, “Last year, we made a significant change when we decided to bring Patrick Vallee which represented a shift in management ideals. Consequently, Patrick brought with him a team of five French players which made up our foreign players contingent. Before, we had a mix of foreign players but Patrick’s move provided a stability in the team. A good understanding was forged between the local players and the five French players and it worked well.”

Convinced that Head Coach Patrick Vallee is a well-versed master of his art, Mr Edward and the management committee gave Patrick a free hand in his selection of players for the new season. Patrick did not disappoint.

“Given that we can only sign players we can afford, the five local signings we made are good players! Three are from Home United, one is from defending champions Tampines Rovers and the last is from Balestier Khalsa. Our foreign signing, Sebastien Etiemble, who we brought in to replace Ismael Benahmed fitted our puzzle. Whereas Ismael Benahmed was more of a second striker, we realized that we needed a playmaker and Sebastien fits that role perfectly,” the beaming Jaguars Chairman continued.

With all the pieces in place and thankful that Sazali Salleh is recovering well from his horrendous injury last year, Mr Edward Liu pointed out the reasons for his confidence in the team.

“Sazali Salleh is a good player and I am pleased to note that he passed his 2.4km test. Hence, I am cautiously confident that the team can achieve the target we have set this season. The bottom-line is that we are really looking forward to getting the support of the fans for this season as we really need the 12th man to be behind us all the way. As for support from the corporate sector, I am indeed very thankful that Mitre has come on board with their sponsorship spanning three years. It is a significant one, committing 255k dollars in all. Of course we also want to thank the media as well. They play a big role in conveying our message to the public.”

“We scored an average of 1.5k supporters in the stands last season and we aim to better that figure this year. We hope to see more young and old Jaguars in the stands and to our fans currently, I would like to thank them for believing in us.”