Manchester City crowd shows Hong Kong fans love football so why not cheer on Kitchee in the local league?
- Fans are willing to pay through the nose to watch a glorified training session, but thumb their noses at local games
- Merchandise and ticket prices show desire to cash in on supporters but local clubs should be looking to build fan base
Manager Pep Guardiola hinted at the club’s place on the totem pole when he intimated that Asia tours were still new to the club, one that was in the English third tier in recent memory before the oil money, big names and trophies started flowing into the club.
“We are not Manchester United, Liverpool, Barcelona, Madrid, Bayern Munich, who for a long, long time are travelling on this kind of tour,” Guardiola said at the pre-match press conference.
While such crowds were commonplace during the 1960s and ’70s, the heyday of Hong Kong football is either long forgotten or way before your time.
Even still, despite the decline in people going to watch the local league there is an undoubted appetite for football in the city.
The number of people wearing football shirts on the streets is testament to that, but the love for the game does not translate to crowds for local football matches.
Why is it that so many people are willing to come and watch what is little more than a glorified training session and pay through the nose for the privilege?
Tickets on sale at the stadium box office on Wednesday night ahead of the game ranged from HK$580 to HK$1,180. That’s not cheap, and it is more than it would cost to watch City play at home.
There was certainly evidence of wanting to cash in on the crowd. Kitchee were even selling kits with commemorative embroidery, for an additional fee of course.
This is a truly bizarre concept. Who wants to never forget the time they watched Hong Kong’s third best team play a friendly against Man City?
There were several other items on sale that marked Manchester City’s visit and people were still queuing up to buy City merch after the match.
Instead of event-specific tat, would it not have been an ideal opportunity to sell Kitchee season tickets, for example, and try to bolster the crowd for the coming campaign?
This was an opportunity for Kitchee to win new fans as much as it was for Manchester City, and it was an opportunity missed.
Preseason tours are a strange business, but the touring team and coaches do not want to be here.
It’s too hot, for a start, to the point where Manchester’s famously miserable weather is seen as favourable. That they are even able to toe the party line in dealing with the press is testament to their media training.
It’s a lovely opportunity for the Kitchee players to play against some of the best in the world, but if it is not used as an opportunity to build a fan base, what’s the point? It’s essentially an expensive staff party at this point.
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Like any good party, people had fun. The half-and-half scarves peddled by the swag sellers summed up the atmosphere. Most of the people in the ground were there to see City’s superstars but they all cheered the loudest for Kitchee’s consolation goal.
It felt like there were 20,000 Kitchee fans. That’s a sight more than their average crowd for last season and Kitchee are by far and away Hong Kong’s best supported team.
If those 20,000 want to support Kitchee, it would be better to do so in the Hong Kong Premier League, where there is a much stronger chance of them not conceding six goals for every one they score.
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Maybe Hongkongers wanting the underdog to thrive in the face of the giant was a factor at play. Perhaps it was merely an example of civic pride.
There’s little doubt the promise of a protest against the government made what was otherwise a routine preseason game interesting.
That’s much like, in many people’s eyes, the opportunity to protest against the Chinese national anthem being the only reason to go to watch the national team.
Politics and sport are not supposed to mix, but when it comes to Hong Kong football it seems that’s the only way to get anything approaching a full house.
