S-League was started by MBT on the backing of GCT over disagreement with M-League over share of stadium gate receipts. Both knew nothing about football. GCT was a swimmer and MBT knew nothing about any sport except clearing sport reports when he was heading the old Singapore Monitor. Only HPK was a footballer himself, amateur, but at least he knew something about football and was roped in. Then, they roped in TKL to use NTUC Income as a front to sponsor S-League. TKL then was still friendly with them and agreed without a question. The financial equation aside, the embarrassment started with France winning World Cup 1998.
The French team that won the World Cup wasn't what a traditional French team would look like. It comprised mostly of African FTs. GCT announced that if France could win the World Cup with FTs, Singapore can qualify for the World Cup with FTs. MBT and HPK had to back GCT of course. Then, half the S-League became an FT bug bed and of course FAS had to make do with the policy and more than half of Singapore national team became FTs. Director QKS quietly resigned. If you don't know who QKS is, then you should be reading some other postings, not wasting your time getting yourself bewildered by postings about Singapore football.