SINGAPORE – The year has just begun but already trouble is brewing in Singapore football, with the Football Association of Singapore (FAS) revealing that it has provisionally suspended a council member for a potential breach.
Responding to queries from The Straits Times, an FAS spokesperson said on Dec 29: “The FAS can confirm that a council member has been provisionally suspended pending an inquiry by the FAS ethics committee on a potential breach. The suspension is due to the pending inquiry and the council member’s duties have been reassigned accordingly.
“As the inquiry is still ongoing, we will not comment further until the FAS ethics committee, an independent judicial body, completes its findings.”
While the national governing body did not reveal the identity of the council member, ST has confimed that it is Harman Ali, founder and head coach of Global Football Academy and head coach of Singapore Football League Division 2 side GFA Sporting Westlake FC.
Harman has since engaged a lawyer to deal with the matter, while the FAS has hired Advocatus Law as its legal representative.
When contacted, Harman said he did not wish for the matter “to be litigated via the media”.
He added: “My lawyer, Mr Glenn Knight, will act on my behalf and deal with the FAS directly. In the interests of preserving the integrity of the proceedings, I shall refrain from commenting further on this matter henceforth.”
The “potential breach” highlighted by the FAS is said to be related to an allegedly leaked document that surfaced after a review of the national men’s Under-22 football team’s performance at the 2023 SEA Games in May. A four-man panel was convened in the same month after the team’s dismal showing, which included a 7-0 loss to Malaysia.
The panel was led by former national head coach Jita Singh and included three FAS council members: Harman, former national footballer and SEA Games assistant chef de mission Lim Tong Hai and former national captain Razali Saad. They spent four weeks interviewing players, coaches, administrators and backroom staff before presenting their reports to the FAS.
The FAS did not make public the full report submitted by the panel but eventually announced a list of 10 recommendations to work on after the conclusion of its review on July 7, 2023. Before that, on June 30, online publication The Monitor SG (TMSG) published a story that was based on “portions of the review” that its writer had seen.
At the time, the FAS issued a note to members on its website urging them “not to react to the story and give it any credence” and to wait for the final report. TMSG was also issued a letter by the FAS’ lawyers on the same day requesting that reports should not be made public, citing a “breach of confidence”.
In the aftermath of the TMSG story, it is understood that the FAS had queried the panel on this, which has since led to the suspension.
Harman, whose term is set to run till 2025, was part of Hougang United chairman Bill Ng’s Team Game Changers who ran against the late Lim Kia Tong’s team at the FAS elections in 2017.
In the 2021 elections, Lim returned unopposed for a second four-year term and Harman was voted in as a council member.
The FAS council consists of president Bernard Tan, vice-presidents S. Thavaneson, Teo Hock Seng, Razali and Ben Teng, an honorary treasurer, general secretary and 10 other members.
