Dear Singapore, your girls playing football want more than applause — they want momentum

Dear Singapore,

Yesterday, I saw a girl playing football at a park near my house. It was late, the kind of hour when dinner plates are cleared and day turns to night.

She was alone under floodlights, just her and a football, with her bicycle parked neatly by the park. She wasn’t doing anything fancy — just touches, turns, juggling. Focused. Steady. No phone, no coach, no noise. The quiet rhythm of practice.

I stood there for a while, not to intrude, but because she reminded me of someone I used to know. Me.

On weekdays after school. On Saturday mornings. And the times I had to spare. Sometimes my brother would join me. But oftentimes it was just me and a football — and a big, audacious dream.

You wouldn’t have looked twice at me then. A small, tan-skinned child on an empty pitch. No spectacle. No spotlight. Just one girl believing she could do something that hadn’t quite been done yet.