SINGAPORE — Michel Sablon is widely credited as the man who transformed Belgian football, but the 67-year-old maestro, who was appointed the Football Association of Singapore’s (FAS) technical director in April, wants the Republic to develop its own “Singapore style” of football in the years ahead.

While Belgian’s model had nurtured the likes of Eden Hazard, Romelu Lukaku, and Vincent Kompany, Sablon said yesterday he does not intend to fully replicate the strategy used in his homeland. Instead, the focus of his new development plan will be on developing and evolving a “Singapore style of play” which will feature attacking, offensive football.

Sablon unveiled the first of the plan’s three core pillars yesterday, as the FAS launched an updated Grassroots manual which aims to make learning football fun for children aged six and above.

It is designed to support all teachers, educators and future coaches involved in grassroots and youth development football in Singapore.

The other two pillars of the plan include refining the development of the Elite Youths — players from the national youth teams and club academies — and improving the standard of coaches’ education.

“The system that I’ll be implementing does have its roots in the current Belgium system,” admitted Sablon. “But it’s important to adapt that to the culture of Singapore and come up with a system the players are comfortable with, so they can fully develop themselves.

“There will not be a fixed style of football that I want to implement, as this will adapt according to how good the players are.

“But it will definitely be an offensive system, because that is the way of putting the opponents under pressure, and when you play in the opponent’s half, you will master the game.”

Under Sablon’s new grassroots development plan, the first phase of the learning process for children aged six and seven involves the implementation of fun and basic football-related games to develop their psychomotor skills and interest in the sport.

The next learning phase targeted at children aged eight and nine will then see the introduction of technical skill training, and playing five-a-side games.

Added Sablon: “It will provide them with fun football games that are appropriate for the various age-groups while helping the children to not only pick up, but also master basic skills such as running, climbing and general coordination.”

The state of Singapore football has recently come under scrutiny following a string of poor performances and results posted by both the senior and under-23 national teams.

In particular, the Republic’s failure to progress past the group stage at the SEA Games in June led to widespread criticism of Singapore football’s developmental pipeline.

Sablon believes the main problem ailing local players of all age groups at the moment is their lack of proper technical ability, and says his plan will ensure that future generations of local footballers will have their basic skills honed from a young age.

“One of the main aspects that we will be looking to improving is the technical abilities of the players,” said Sablon. “When you see some games here, players are sometimes unable to do the basic things right.

“But we should be mastering the ball from the beginning. It is only after improving the technical abilities of our players that we can then start to look at the tactical aspect of the game.

“But this takes a lot of time and hard work, and we might face resistance from both inside and outside the FAS. Nonetheless, we need to push on and move forward if we want to improve.”

The grassroots plan will be implemented in tandem with the FAS Cubs programme — featuring weekly football sessions for children between seven to 12 at five locations — which will be launched at the Jalan Besar Stadium tomorrow.