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:
Three foreign-born, non-FSTs have been called up to the national team, they include: