Football fans in Hong Kong are largely disappointed, after the HKFA announced that this year’s traditional Lunar New Year Cup will only feature a friendly between the Hong Kong Representative Team and a hand-picked selection of local premier league clubs. Previously, Canny Leung’s Pegasus intended to arrange the prestigious tournament, which has seen the likes of New York Cosmos, FC Tokyo, Guangzhou Evergrande and Sparta Prague in recent years, but apparently Pegasus failed to attract any team from overseas and eventually gave up.
However, spectators will most likely not even see Hong Kong’s best players, as the top teams (as well as the clubs from the Chinese leagues) will hardly release their players for this unofficial competition. Eastern have already announced that they will not participate, hence definitely keeping Yapp Hung Fai, Bai He, Xu Deshuai, Ju Yingzhi and Andy Naegelein away from appearing with the Representative Team.
The Lunar New Year Cup will be held on February 9th at Mong Kok Stadium.
