Foreign sports talent

Singapore sports scene faces a huge challenge today.

How do we retain foreign sports talent in Singapore?
They feature in many prominent sports in Singapore. Football, table-tennis, badminton and even swimming.
But there is much controversy in securing their services and granting them citizenship. Sometimes they fail to obtain the targeted results expected by their sports association, leading to acrimonious disputes and much accusations. Other times they cannot handle the unfamiliarity, pressure in a foreign land or even just decided on taking another path of life. Foreign escapees are not new, neither are career switchers.
How can we resolve this ugly situation which after money is pour into the foreign talent scheme yet little results are seen, and after Singapore sees her trust in them betrayed. Of course there are still good apples in this lot, but one bad apple is one too much.
So what is the solution? By offering more money to entice them? Getting them when they are younger in hope of a chance to instill more loyalty in them to Singapore and offer them citizenship as soon as possible so they would be "Singaporeans" for a long time? Or import in more foreign sports talent so the loss of a few would be less heart-wrenching?
I confess I have no panacea to this complex and multi-faceted problem. This is about immigration, sports excellence and passion all melded into one.
What I do know is that Singapore youths are not getting the proper training and exposure to sports to tum them into passionate sports-natic, ignored by sports officials who prefer to spend their time nurturing foreign talents and child proteges who in actual fact had prior training.
I see many young people playing football and soccer everyday at the court downstairs, playing badminton, swimming, table-tennis at the community centre. They play because they for leisure and derives joy in engaging in physical activities. But their understanding remains at the rudimentary level. They are not in school teams or national teams but nevertheless display sufficient skills at their game. These are the people that are being left out and the people that sports association needs to interest into joining them. Each will benefit if they interact with one another. The youth will become better at their game and the sports will have a larger talent pool to recruit from. In other words, a sports association needs to involve and actively engage the public which is fundamental in creating a sports culture before local talents will be spotted: they first have to be exposed and trained. So stop lamenting about the dearth of local sports talent! They are raw diamonds and are simply overlooked and passed over in favour of polished imported ones.
And in tune with the upcoming Youth Olympics, it is time for a sports culture to prosper in Singapore. Hold free sports clinics and training sessions for the public and young. Make sports easily available to Singaporeans to allow them to integrate it into their lifestyle. After all, sports can and is a daily conscious activity. Let's make it into a daily affair. Start today!