Aide Iskandar: Translating success from pitch to bench.

Gary Koh
info@sleague.com

After an illustrious playing career for club and country spanning 16 years, Aide Iskandar Sahak is looking forward to his latest challenge in football as a coach.

The 34-year-old hung up his boots after the 2009 season, making him the last player from the famed 1994 Malaysia Cup team to retire, closing one of the most glorious chapters in Singapore football history.

He first made his appearance for the Lions as a rookie sweeper that year before winning his international debut against Myanmar in 17 July 1995.

The defender would eventually win three regional titles, the 1998 and 2004/05 Tiger Cups and the 2007 Asean Football Federation Championship, with the last two successes seeing him serve as skipper.

His final international cap came against Australia on 30 June 2007 before he left the national team to concentrate on earning his sports management degree and coaching badges.

That marked the end of an era on the international scene, although his club career would continue for two more years after that – and quite a career it was too.

When the S.League kicked off in 1996 after Singapore’s withdrawal from the Malaysia Cup a year before, he joined Police FC – renamed Home United one year later – where he won several domestic honours, including two league titles.

After 10 years with the Protectors, he enjoyed further stints with Malaysian side Johor FA, Tampines Rovers and Geylang United before joining Sengkang as player-assistant coach last year.

Following a short stint as Prime League coach, Aide was promoted to the hotseat on a caretaker basis following the departure of predecessor Jorg Steinebrunner in mid-season.

The former national team captain is now tasked with guiding the new-look and youthful Sengkang Punggol to respectability following his dual appointment as head coach and executive committee member.

Under his tutelage, the Hougang side have enjoyed a decent start to the season so far. They bounced back from the opening 2-1 home loss to Balestier Khalsa before beating Gombak United by the same score.

Then a last minute goal denied them a second straight league win and they came from behind to beat Beijing Guoan Talent away 3-1 after extra time in the first round of the League Cup. The Dolphins face SAFFC in the quarterfinals on Monday.

He is keen to give back to the football community by guiding and mentoring the young players to success on and off the pitch.

He believes his experiences as a leader in his playing days will help put him in good stead as the man in charge of the dressing room.

“During my younger days, I believed that being the captain was to lead the team on the field,” he said.

“But over the years, when you grow older, you tend to take more responsibilities off the pitch as well.

“And being a coach is quite similar; it is just that you are also in the midst of working with the management a step or two closer as well.

“It definitely gives me a good experience and good exposure being a captain, now being a coach.

“With the leadership qualities I have, going through the good times and the hard times and the knowledge and experience I have gained under good coaches during my playing career, I can actually impart these into the young players here.”

Aide believes the key to keep Sengkang on the upward momentum is to maintain a harmonious and bright dressing room.

“Keeping a good dressing room is the most important thing for me,” he pointed out.

“In every big and successful team, they always have a healthy dressing room.

“In order to have a good dressing room, the key is you must make the players happy and for them to play for you.”

With the core of the team coming from a mixture of seasoned veterans and players who are promoted from the Prime League, the former international defender believes the combination of experience and enthusiastic youthfulness will be the key ingredient to Sengkang shedding the strugglers’ tag in 2010.

“The reason why we move so many players up from the Prime League is because we want to see continuity,” he said. “They have adapted to my style last year, so this year I hope to see them do much better.

“I believe these young players in my team, they are hungry. They might not be technically good, which I have a lot of work to do with them (to improve on), but their desire and commitment to do well have been pleasing for me.

“Another key is to keep the senior players together and work with them. That’s how they can translate whatever that I want into the younger ones.

“I am sure if the seniors show a good example, the young ones will follow. They will have to take more responsibilities on and off the pitch this season.”

Thus, players like Canadian Murphy Wiredu, captain Nor Azli Yusoff and fullback Lau Meng Meng will have key roles to play in pushing the team to a better placing in the league this season.

Aide said: “I have mentioned to them, ‘You are the key players and backbone of the team. You should take more responsibilities and try to guide these young players.’

“As much as the coach tries his level best, on the pitch, it will be these senior players who will be guiding them, which I have been through before during my playing days.”

He believes the club’s bold policy of grooming young talents will eventually bear fruit despite the players’ rawness and his coaching inexperience.

“A lot of people will have questions about my coaching abilities, but I think I have represented the national team 120 times,” he said.

“I was coaching in the Prime League before taking the next step to become S.League coach. I have to be confident with myself and be prepared to take criticisms. Hopefully one day I will become a successful coach.

“The club is in the business of grooming young players and giving them opportunities to play. I hope they take these opportunities to do well, and if one day a few of them get to move to a bigger club or get called up to the national team, I will be more than happy.

“I think it is a win-win situation for a young coach and a young team. If we do well, we are going to get a bonus. If we don’t, a lot of people will not expect too much from us because we are a young team.

“But trust me, we are not going to stay in the league and just be a participating team. We will be out there and work our socks off to the last minute in each and every game we play in because we are a difficult team to break.”

In addition to his present coaching role in the S.League, he is also the local representative of Manchester United Soccer Schools in Southeast Asia and a part-time media pundit with ESPN Star Sports.

To concentrate on his present assignments, he revealed he had turned down several acting opportunities with local Malay television channel Suria, where he was an instant hit as the lead actor in the telemovie “Terima Kasih Cikgu (Thank You, Teacher in Malay)” in 2000.

It was not the easiest of decisions, given that he did actually like his time in that production, but ultimately his diverse football-related interests came first.

“The only issue about acting is it is time-consuming, and I am not able to cater to the schedule the production team has set,” he explained.

“For one set, it can take up to three or four hours to shoot a scene and there were times I had to turn them down because it would affect my schedule.”

With many of his former Malaysia Cup colleagues and fellow league professionals also making moves into coaching after their playing days, Aide believes this helps to improve the quality of local football through expert guidance.

“I believe it is an advantage for Singapore football to have ex-players becoming coaches,” he said.

“You can actually group them into two categories, which is either they are developmental coaches or elite coaches.

“If they do not make it to the elite, they can become developmental coaches, where they can teach the young players as young as six years old all the way to the National Football Academy.

“I believe we must have ex-players to coach the younger kids because the kids must be able to see how a coach can actually dribble a good ball, pass a good ball, receive a good ball, head a good ball and shoot a good ball.”

Aide, who is also part of the former captains’ advisory panel in FAS, also feels the former professionals can also do more in other capacities.

“It’s good to see them coach, but we should not narrow it down to coaching. They can also be trained to be administrators, marketing people, operations managers, etc.,” he continued.

“In other parts of the world you can see ex-players become presidents of their own clubs, administrators and even secretary-generals in their various countries.

“It gives them an advantage of understanding the game as they have played at the highest level and these are actually resources. It is important not to let them go, and instead actually make full use of them.”

Whether the football scene here will make full use of Aide remains to be seen, but going by how he is going about his nascent coaching career at Sengkang, he is certainly keen to apply himself.

Now, as before, the man is fighting hard to be a brave leader, working for the cause that is Singapore football as he looks to create more success stories for himself and for others.

Above article taken from S-League News.