I was as shocked as anyone when I heard the latest news surrounding the closure of Tanjong Pagar United and merger between Hougang United and Woodlands Wellington.

I’ve played alongside and against these guys and faced some great battles on the field. It looks like the greatest battle that they had to face was off the field with the new sanctions by the S.League. We may have been opponents before, but now the local football fraternity stands as one, in sorrow at the state of our local league.

Close to 80 football players will now have to find a new career outside of football or try to continue their football career elsewhere.

I was in the same predicament just 10 months ago, desperately looking for a club based anywhere in the world, and it eventually cost me dearly.

In January this year, I was at my wit’s end in my search for a football club. I had given up on looking for a club in the S.League after being rejected over and over again. So I turned my attention to clubs overseas.

I know I am not the best player in the world, so I sent my football C.V. to various clubs, agents and coaches all over the world looking for a trial to prove my worth.

Teams around Asia were looking to bring in someone who had a national cap to their name at least. The only time I represented the nation was in the Under-16 level and I never made the full squad nor should I as there were better players ahead of me.

After weeks of searching and joining various sites looking for an opportunity, I thought I struck gold!

An agent from Slovakia reached out to me and said there was an opportunity in the second division in Denmark with a club called Vejle Boldklub.

I was skeptical at first and have always believed that when it’s too good to be true, then that’s probably the case.

I asked this agent for more information and he sent me a detailed contract saying that the club will cover my flight, accommodation and meals during my 10 day trial period.

All I had to do was give a €1,000 (S$1,600) deposit to him which I will get back at the end of the trial. This was due to previous cases of flights and hotels being booked with the player not turning up for the trials.

All this sounded plausible to me, probably due to the desperation I was in, and I stalked his agency website and saw him in pictures having dinner with his fellow countryman Marek Hamsik (who currently plies his trade in Napoli) and read testimonials of young players he helped to arrange trials for in Italy.

He even sent me a copy of his passport and everything checked out.

To the credit of my family and girlfriend, they were supportive of me chasing my dream and a €1,000 was a big investment on my part as I wasn’t being paid anymore with my last contract with Geylang International expiring in December.

After much consideration, I decided to go through with this and was told by the agent to transfer the money through Western Union to his account in the Czech Republic.

At this point, let me point out that you should NEVER transfer money to an agent through Western Union as that is the first red flag.

The second red flag, the Western Union staff warned me several times that the Czech Republic is one of the countries listed with a high risk of scam artists.

Desperation is a funny thing. It clouds all sense of judgment. As soon as I transferred the money to the agent and I got the alert he collected it under his name which was on his website and passport, he went silent.

Needless to say, I bombarded this guy with emails, text messages and phone calls but he never replied. The website that this agent contacted me through were great help as they contacted Interpol to track him down and I found in the midst of all this that a young 17-year-old boy from Poland was also drawn by his lure of professional football in Denmark.

I waited for an update but days turned into weeks and I never did get a concrete update from anyone regarding my money. It looked like he got away with it!

In a way I only have myself to blame as I never felt at ease with the whole situation, but I was hoping that luck would finally turn in my favour after a long struggle looking for a team.

It’s never nice to be cheated and I never did get my money back. The only positive I can take from this is that I’m richer for the experience.