Coming Of Age

Growing up in a family of footballers, Ilhan Fandi found his calling in the sport and his adolescent years have been anything but ordinary.

- Ishan Singh

As he tells me about his childhood—which wasn’t all that long ago—Ilhan Fandi pauses to confirm his whereabouts with his manager, Uncle Adrian. Did he turn 11 living in Indonesia or Singapore? For a brief moment, the two consider Malaysia as well, but no, only his father went to live there, Ilhan refutes. Singapore, we settle upon.

A return to the homeland, in fact, following a four(or maybe six) year-long stint in Jakarta, during which Ilhan discovered futsal—a variety of football involving smaller teams and a synthetic court. Too young to join the practices, he’d follow along from the sidelines, learning what he could from his elder brothers, Irfan and Ikhsan. It was one of the few times that all three of them shared the field. “I was way younger so I don’t remember too much,” says Ilhan. “[My brothers] would be doing their own training and I’d practise on the side.”

After returning to Singapore, Ilhan doesn’t see his brothers quite as often. By this point, they’re already flourishing in their youth careers. They soon leave for Spain and then, a year after, Chile. His father Fandi has moved to Malaysia, following up his legendary career as a player—the first Singaporean to play in Europe—with a respectable one as a coach. Though he’s barely a teenager, Ilhan can already envision his life laid out in front of him. “My family never forced me to play football,” he recollects. “This is what I wanted to do. By the time I reached secondary school, my brothers were already playing overseas and they were doing quite well. I wanted to be just like them.”