At least there is Kitchee's Fernando, Wellingson de Souza and Tai Po's Michel Lugo who will become eligible for naturalisation next year. In addition, it is also a surprise that Mixu called up Kitchee's Li Ngai Hoi who like Sandro was not initially called up in the preliminary squad. I believe Mixu and Chu Chi Kwong were both in attendance during Kitchee's goaless draw against R&F HK a few days ago and that is where I suspect they must had been impressed with Li's form. Although the absence of Andy Russell and Dani Cancela were odd omissions unless they were injured, I wasn't entirely too surprised that Alex Akande did not make the cut.
I still don't understand what Ju Yingzhi is doing in the squad. He has been given so many opportunities in the past and has never delivered.
I think Ju Yingzhi is more than likely to remain on the substitutes bench and I cannot see him feature or contribute much during the finals. I'm still not convinced on Sun Ming-Him's inclusion (as a striker) whilst yes he is playing regularly for Tai Po and had only scored a goal (in a lucky rebound during Tai Po's win against BC Rangers a few weeks ago), he isn't exactly the goal scoring type of player. So who will act as replacement for Andy Russell and Dani Cancela if they did not make the final list?
Southern release Komazec and Wan. They say it's because they don't see qualifying for Asia as realistic this year so they're letting both of them leave early.
I think they mean Wofoo Tai Po is likely to receive its AFC club license for ACL qualifying next year, so KC Southern (third in HKPL last season behind Wofoo Tai Po and the ineligible R&F FC) are unlikely to replace them.
Dalian Yifang have released Alex Akande and he is now looking for a new club. I think he should return to HKPL?
Wikipedia is claiming that North Korea are not entering any clubs in the 2020 AFC Cup, that means 4.25 SC will not enter. Macau's CPK will enter the group stage directly and Kitchee will play either Mongolian or Taiwanese opposition. So a HK club may actually win the group stage and proceed to the inter-zone semi-finals.
https://hk.sports.appledaily.com/sports/20191210/3DYAM3LTXP37E7BV7BZQDFBPTM/ Apple Daily reports that as North Korea has been effectively banned by AFC, Hong Kong will move up one place in the rankings from 11th to 10th. Therefore HK will be granted an automatic group place in the 2021 ACL, which will be expanded to include 40 clubs in the group stage.
So now the questions are: 1) Which associations will be allowed to enter teams in the AFC Cup? 2) Will R&F be allowed to qualify for Asia?
EAFF E1 C'ship: South Korea 2:0 Hong Kong Generally a respectable score but a mediocre to poor performance from Hong Kong. We only had about 15% possession for the whole game, that means we were defending almost all the time. We couldn't even keep the ball and only created two or three chances. James Ha had one good chance in the first half but he could not connect with the ball properly. Giovane and Roberto came on in the second half and Giovane actually held up the ball better upfront, but there was no way he could make an impact on the Korean defense on his own. Yapp Hung-Fai looked average and did not impress. I don't think he found any new admirers.
Wasn't surprised by the result, but Hong Kong were once again heaviliy reliant on their defensive formation where they have so many players going back to their box to defend and did not really provide much creativity in terms of attack which is what contributed to the lack of possession with the only goal scoring opportunity came from James Ha in the first half. Huang Yang looked very surprised with the handball decision went against him which led to South Korea's first goal with Hwang In-Beom's free kick. Anyways, they will be playing against a rather youthful Japanese team with some of the young players prepping for next year's Summer Olympics and I really wonder if Mixu will rest some of his players for this match?
It was a mostly creditable performance outside of the second goal which came as a result of everyone switching off. If you're disappointed, I guess it depends on what your expectations for the tournament were. I expected Mixu to set the team up to do damage control in the first two matches and try to go into the final match ahead of China on GD. Our best chance of getting a result was always going to be against China and they were also likely to lose their first two matches as well. So if you accept that finishing third is the goal (which would automatically qualify us for the 2021 tournament) then the way we played shouldn't be surprising. I don't expect a much rotation in the next match. Perhaps we'll see Beto, Leung Nok Hang and Ju from the start.
I expect us to try to maintain possession more than we did. <20% possession is way too low for any football team. The players simply gave the ball away. Sometimes it felt like they didn't even want to maintain possession. Some of the players are very poor technically and they can't even trap the ball. It does make me wonder what they do in training.
http://paper.wenweipo.com/2019/12/08/SP1912080011.htm Hong Kong Pegasus will not organize the Chinese New Year Cup next year, because Vissel Kobe refuse to come and take part. HKFA will organize it and most likely it will be another HK imports vs HK NT affair. In addition, the traditional Guangdong-HK Cup is postponed. Also there is no news about when the Interport Cup between Macau and Hong Kong will take place.
While Yapp did not impress, I think today's performance shows that he is by far our best Goalkeeper. Tong Kin Man was at fault for 2, arguably 3 of the goals. Given his age and other options out there, I believe he no longer has a role to play with the HKNT.
Some of those goals by Japan were unstoppable but by and large, that was the worst I've seen Hong Kong play. It shouldn't take going 4-0 down at halftime for the players to start showing effort. If they had played with the same effort in the second half throughout the entire match and still lost 5-0, I would've been ok with it as Japan are a better team. So now we face a must win on Wednesday. Even if China somehow loses 6-0 against Korea and is equal to us on GD, they still hold the tiebreaker because of goals scored. Mixu will have to figure out a way to get some goals out of this team. I really hope he goes with two up top because it may well be our only chance.
FT: South Korea 1-0 China South Korea dominated the match and they were unlucky not to score more. So if Hong Kong does not want to finish last in this c'ship, HK has no choice but to win, i.e. they will need to score a goal or more.
Tse Tak-him admitted himself he was nervous. His inexperience at this level clearly showed. He rushed out of goal too easily and stayed on his line when he should have gone for the cross. I don't believe in playing 5 at the back. What always happens is that the ball will ricochet when one player tries to clear the ball, it almost always inevitably hits another player. (South Korea's first goal came from a Huang Yang handball which was a clearance by Helio.) Also the lack of midfielder and strikers mean the cleared ball will come back within seconds. It is more important to have more midfielders and start pressuring and defending at the half way line. Also even if you have lots of defenders in the box, they are no use against good medium to long range shooters. China has the hulky Yu Da-Bao as centre back and if we don't play two upfront there is no way we can get past the Chinese defence and score. I doubt Mixu has the confidence to do that.