Singapore Foreign Talent Scheme
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The Singapore Foreign Sports Talent (FST) Scheme is a program run by the Football Association of Singapore (FAS) to boost Singaporean football. Its goal is to attract foreign players in Singapore to change nationality and thus play for the Singapore national football team. The scheme is described as the second key pillar of the FAS football excellence plans.
Launched in the year 2000, its objective was to complement the FAS Youth Development programme by identifying the playing positions in the National Teams that were lacking, especially from its youth development output and to fill these gaps with FSTs. The first FSTs were inducted in Jan 2002.
In 2002, the national team welcomed Croatian-born Mirko Grabovac, Brazilian-born Egmar Goncalves and English defender Daniel Bennett to strengthen the national team. While the Nigerian-born pair of Agu Casmir and Itimi Dickson received their Singapore citizenship in 2003 and 2004 respectively. The FAS, with the help of the clubs, has identified several other talented U-21 foreign players under this scheme. Their performances are being closely monitored in the S.League.
When the FAS first launched the FST scheme in 2000, the intention was to offer citizenship to about 2 to 3 foreign players a year.
However, due to the stringent selection process and early success to the youth development programme, to-date, only nine foreign-born players have been granted Singapore citizenship. All of them have played for the National Team and continue to play and contribute to the S.League.
List of FSTs:
Egmar Goncalves (Granted SC in 2002)
Mirko Grabovac (Granted SC in 2002)
Daniel Bennett (Granted SC in 2002)
Agu Casmir (Granted SC in 2003)- Itimi Dickson (Granted SC in 2004)
Shi Jiayi (Granted SC in 2005)- Precious Emuejeraye (Granted SC in 2005)
Mustafic Fahrudin (Granted SC in 2005)- Qiu Li (Granted SC in 2008)
Three foreign-born, non-FSTs have been called up to the national team, they include:
Bah Mamadou (Became SC in 2005)- John Wilkinson (Became SC in 2007)
Aleksander Duric (Became SC in 2007)
