Opinion | Left Field: District teams need extra support
Government-backed Project Phoenix will be a failure unless smaller clubs like Tai Po are given more financial help
Listening to Chan Ping, club secretary of Senior Shield champions Wofoo Tai Po, you get the feeling that the reality in la-la land - aka the Hong Kong Football Association - is treacherous ground for district-based teams and that the much-hyped Project Phoenix is not worth the paper it is written on.
Chan was talking after Tai Po defeated Citizen to lift the Senior Shield last Sunday, the first time the club had won this tournament since being promoted to the top flight in 2006. But as far as Tai Po are concerned, it was a hollow victory because the tournament has been devalued by the powers-that-be in the HKFA.
But more on this later. Of greater concern is what Chan had to say about Project Phoenix, the government's grandiose plan to breathe new life into the domestic game. If Chan is right, this multi-million dollar scheme has done little to help district-based clubs like Tai Po, Tuen Mun and Southern, the very teams that Project Phoenix was supposed to assist. Yesterday, Southern voiced their own concerns.
At present the government doles out HK$500,000 annually to district teams. This is hardly enough to pay the salary for a season for any half-decent professional, leave alone the budget for an entire team.
Tai Po have a HK$6 million budget, with much of the money coming from sponsors. According to Chan, Tai Po are unlikely to hold on to their benefactors when the contracts run out, because the sponsors feel they are getting little in the way of return on their investments.
So dire is the situation, Chan says, that Tai Po may have to withdraw from the top flight next season. Facing a shortfall of HK$800,000 this season, Chan's words can be viewed either as an attempt to force the government to up the ante, or it could be an awful indictment of a system that seems to favour the bigger clubs.