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Just a few matches into the new Singapore Premier League season, and Albirex Niigata’s decision to turn local appears to be a very bad move for Singapore football. Since its appearance in our league in 2004, Albirex has certainly taken Singapore football up by several levels, as evidenced by its near-total domination of our league with its attractive brand of football, superior fitness and tactical awareness.  Even when our then S-League administrators tried their best to ensure that our other local clubs had a slight chance of winning, such as mandating Albirex to field at least one local player in its starting line-up for an entire half, Albirex simply buckled down, instead of protesting, and continued to win trophy after trophy.  This speaks volumes about its professionalism and standards that our clubs should aspire to reach. In addition, Albirex has won the hearts and minds of the local community with its various regular outreach and engagement activities which our local clubs should emulate.  It is therefore very sad to see that after turning local, Albirex is no longer the team that we know and want to see. This leaves me to wonder – is such a move really good for our clubs and most importantly, for local football?  I would have thought that if our local clubs could beat the “old” Albirex, it would be an achievement, and demonstrate that our local clubs have indeed improved, rather than winning against a severely weakened Albirex, which serves no purpose at all.