Gavin Lee (football coach)

Lee joined the JSSL Singapore when he was 18 as a "cone guy" before becoming the general manager in 2016.[2] Gavin is also the youngest ever head coach in the history of the Singapore Premier League. Typically, football coaches in Singapore usually embark on their coaching career only in their late thirties, after ending their playing careers. As a young football coach, Gavin admitted that a consequence of his daily routines is that he “does not have as many friends as others”.

Since he was 17, Gavin has been a football coach. He worked his way up from the grassroots, coaching children as young as five at JSSL.

As a teenager, he was skillful enough as a footballer to make it into the now-defunct National Football Academy. But after seeing the talent of his batch mates, such as Gabriel Quak, Hariss Harun and Izwan Mahbud, Gavin knew he would not be able to keep up. “It was also at that point that I realised I couldn’t cope academically, so I decided to choose a different path,” Gavin shared. He turned to coaching because his father had been a coach since he was young. Apart from doing his coaching badges from the basic grassroots courses to the introductory courses and the more elite AFC (Asian Football Confederation) ‘A’ diploma licence, Gavin also had to get his degree.

Lee was a former student of Victoria School and Victoria Junior College.[4] He later studied in Nanyang Technological University and had a degree in Sports Science and Management.[2]

When Gavin Lee was in university, he was often labelled as an “old man”. That was because instead of heading to suppers and parties with his peers, Gavin regularly turned down invitations because he needed to rest and wake up early for work the following day. He was working as a coach at private football academy JSSL then.