KC Southern signed two different Stefans. Stefan Pereira formerly of BC Rangers and Stefan Antonic who is a former Kitchee youth player whose father Dejan had played and managed several clubs in Hong Kong.
He is the all time leading scorer for the national team. The only unfortunate thing for him is that in the latter stage of his career, he didn't play for a realistic title contender.
Yeung Ching Kwong confirms that Lam Ka Wai will not be retained. He had a clause in his contract that would trigger if he played in 50% of R&F's matches in the remainder of the season but because of the pandemic, the season was suspended. This allowed R&F to sign Jared Lum, who they've wanted for some time and whose contract with Kitchee expires at the end of this month. Yeung also confirmed that Lo Kwan Yee had signed a new contract with R&F.
Lum is a legitimate midfielder, one of the best in Hong Kong. R&F will fit him. He will be eligible for the NT in a few years I believe.
Some AFC Cup news. Kitchee who were initially meant to face-off against the winner of Tai Power FC Vs Ulanbaatar FC for a place in Group I will now take Tai Po FC's spot who withdrew due to financial difficulties.
Tai Po FC and Yuen Long have both withdrawn from the next HKPL season 2020/21. It is not known whether there will be any replacements at this time.
That means Jared Lum will miss his opportunity to play in the AFC Cup for Kitchee. That's a shame because I think he would have done well. But I guess R&F's offer $$$ is difficult to refuse.
https://hk.on.cc/hk/bkn/cnt/sport/20200612/bkn-20200612184953434-0612_00882_001.html Even though Tai Po and Yuen Long are dropping out, Resources Capital looks likely to be going up. According to this article, there is one other First Division club who intends to go up as well. The clue in that article is that the club is finished mid-table in First Division. The identity of the team is still a mystery to me. South China? No - not mid-table. Hoi KIng? No - Fung Hoi Man says they're not interested. Wing Yee? Maybe - they're owned by a pretty rich guy but they've never made much noise about going up. Citizen? Probably not - they declined promotion to the inaugural Premier League season because they wanted to stay amateur. Eastern District? Maybe - they could play out of Siu Sai Wan but who is their benefactor? Central & Western? No - no football stadiums in their district. Sha Tin? Maybe - they could play out of Shatin SG but who is their benefactor?
I'm not really bothered about having more clubs getting involved in HKPL, because more clubs do not translate automatically to more good players. Sometimes below standard players play and that just invites criticism from everyone, then the club owners get frustrated and reduce their investments, then the clubs go bust and people point at the whole thing as a failure, especially those who wants to see HKFA goes away.
Well this is awkward. Last Thursday, FIFA issued an FAQ on COVID-19 Football Regulatory Issues. In the document, it says that member associations can start their summer transfer windows before the 2019-20 season is over, but, the overlap cannot be more than four weeks. The HKFA wanted to begin the summer transfer window on 4 August, but now it appears that this may not happen until October. A bigger problem is that any player who transfer during the window, as a free agent or otherwise, cannot play until the 2020-21 season begins. This could have a huge impact on clubs like Southern and Happy Valley since so many of their players have left.
https://news.mingpao.com/ins/體育/article/20200620/s00006/1592647578158/【港超】富力傳向各港超隊發信-倡腰斬今季聯賽但保留盃賽決賽 R&F FC proposes to all HKPL clubs to abandon the 2019-20 HKPL season, simply announce the final standings but does not award the league champion title. They also propose to only play the FA Cup final between themselves and Eastern FC. I think given the current HKPL players situations, finishing the 2019-20 season is no longer practical. Abandoning/Ending the season maybe the best way to go. As for who will get the AFC clubs places, maybe that can be decided on another day or using other measures.
http://paper.wenweipo.com/2020/06/21/SP2006210008.htm HK Pegasus will recruit Kwok Ka-Lok as head coach, with Fan Chun-Yip, Cheung Po-Chun, Fabio etc as assistants. They will also recruit the majority of HK U23 players to form a young team in the new campaign.
Looks like the newly signed players who had joined HKPL clubs are given the exemption by FIFA as long as they are out of contract. In addition, Resources Capital FC who were on top of Division One before the pandemic caused the entire season to be cancelled will be promoted to the HKPL 2020/21 season.
https://www.hk01.com/即時體育/490459/港超聯-富力復操徐宏傑首亮相-白鶴林嘉緯確認離隊 R&F returned to training today becoming the first HKPL club to use the FTC since reopening. Tsui Wang Kit trained with the team for the first time and says that his contract with R&F is for two years. Deble, Giovane, Guira, Dudu and Lum are still undergoing a 14 day quarantine after returning to Hong Kong and did not train today. Yeung Ching Kwong confirmed that Lo Kong Wai and Lam Ka Wai are the only major departures while Bai He has returned to his home province of Hebei to work as a U16 coach.
In addition to signing Fernando, they've also confirmed to have sign two youth players with Happy Valley's Alex Christian Jojo and Tai Po's Cheng Tsz-Sum.
Kitchee SC unveiled a number of new signings joining the club which include the speculated Manu Gavilan from Happy Valley, Luk Kin-Ming, Peng Lin-Lin and Tomas Maronesi (who is eligible for naturalisation in August) all from BC Rangers. In addition, Ho Chun-Ting who was on-loan at Tai Po and Ngan Cheuk-Pan who was last seen played for the Hong Kong U23 team also joins Kitchee SC.
In addition to Yuto Nakamura and Tsang Kam-To, Lee Man added Pegasus's Wong Chun-Ho and Marcus Chang, goalkeeper Chan Ka-Ho from Yuen Long and youngster Anson Wong from South China AA to their squad.
Eastern unveiled four new signings which include Kitchee's Fernando, Happy Valley's Alex Jojo and Tai Po's Cheng Tsz-Sum and Toby Phillip Down joining the team.
Revised AFC Cup schedule. Group I teams asked to play 6 matches in 16 days. Will be interested to see whether the new 2020-21 HKPL season begins before or after these dates.
I wonder where will this centralized venue is. In my opinion Taiwan is the safest place to be right now, but I also think Taiwan will not want to jeopardize their own safety. On the other hand Macau might be interested to put up with the costs of hosting to boost their FA's tarnished image. As for HK and Mongolia, simply no way.