SINGAPORE -- It is not often that Singapore -- currently sitting 149th in the FIFA men's world rankings -- get to lock horns with World Cup-quality opposition.
But such an opportunity is exactly what they will get over the next five days.
On Friday, Singapore open The Mizuho Blue Challenge against Paraguay, whose round-of-16 appearance at this year's World Cup was the fifth time they had reached the knockout round of football's biggest tournament.
Then, on Tuesday, there will be an even-more mouthwatering tie when the Lions take on record five-time world champions Brazil, who have arrived with a squad littered with famous names such as Vinícius Júnior, Raphinha and Gabriel Magalhães to name but a few.
The chance for Singapore's players to see how they match up against some of the world's best looms as a once-in-a-lifetime occasion.
Yet, at the end of the day, Singapore coach Gavin Lee is determined for the occasion to not just be about the glitz and glamour but with their main goal still in sight -- their preparations for next year's AFC Asian Cup, even though it has since been postponed from January to December.
"It is a shame the Asian Cup has been moved but, again, this is outside of our control," Lee replied, when asked how the postponement of the continental competition would affect how they view the upcoming games.
"This window doesn't change, in the sense that, it's still preparation for us. It's meant to be preparing for the Asian Cup.
"It's just that, instead of being the last step before the Asian Cup, now it's a little bit earlier in the journey, which is still good.
"We want to give the boys the chance to play World Cup teams, because we have two opposition in our group that are World Cup-level teams [Australia and Iraq]. And when we play this kind of teams, we don't expect it to be easy."
Lee hopes the undoubted difficulty Singapore will face against top-quality South American opposition will provide valuable lessons as they build towards a delayed return to the Asian Cup -- with next year's edition only their second appearance after hosting in 1984, and the first they have qualified on merit.
"We expect ourselves to be exposed -- and this is what we want," Lee added.
"The more exposed we get in the lead-up to the Asian Cup, the better. Because then we understand ourselves a little bit more.
"We know the kind of areas we need to get better at. At the same time, I know playing tomorrow, I'm very sure there will be certain parts of the game where we'll be quite proud of.
"And those are the things we need to hold on to because those things will survive at this level."
While Lee is firmly focused on the present and future, and not the past, Singapore will be unable to escape supporter demands of a rebound from their last outing -- a humiliating 6-0 loss to bitter rivals Malaysia back in October.
When asked about the danger of fan sentiment turning even more negative should they suffer heavy defeats against formidable opposition, Lee replied: "First and foremost, in sport, there's no guarantee.
"Anything can happen as we saw in the Malaysia game, even more so when we go up against strong opposition. The challenges become a lot harder as well.
For us, it's the same. We just focus on what we can control -- and that's us. We're very clearheaded within the team, and around the team, of what we want to achieve at the end of our journey, which is the Asian Cup. We know the necessary steps before that.
"As long as we keep referencing where we want to end up and why we're doing things, we can put things into perspective. When you put things into perspective, you understand the reasons why. That should give us the fuel to keep going again no matter how hard the challenge is.