Column | How Hong Kong football turned a globally significant good news story into an embarrassing farce

The Asian Champions League is set to have a female manager in it for the first time as Chan Yuen-ting leads Hong Kong champions Eastern for the city’s debut in the group stage of the region’s top competition.

A brilliant good-news story which could get Hong Kong football global attention. Just this week the BBC named Chan as one of their 100 Women of 2016. Next week she could be named Women’s Coach of the Year at the Asian Football Confederation’s awards.

But drowning it all out are the blasts from shotguns squarely pointed at officals’ own feet, in a saga of infighting, backstabbing, whining and public arguing of which most Hong Kong kindergartners would be embarrassed.
A recap: champions Eastern lost a sponsor and decided they couldn’t compete in the Champions League. It was decided Kitchee would replace them with Southern taking Kitchee’s place in the qualifying play-off. Eastern quickly changed their mind but the HKFA board rejected their plea for reinstatement. The AFC pointed out that Hong Kong would lose its group stage place if runners-up Kitchee were nominated, and at a hastily convened board meeting, it was decided Eastern would be put forward after all.

Kitchee’s owner Ken Ng Kin lambasted HKFA chief executive Mark Sutcliffe, Southern threatened legal action against him and/or the HKFA and a furious Sutcliffe hit back in a 2,000-word-plus essay in which he went through the fiasco in detail, saving particular ire for Kitchee.

Ng duly lashed back on his Facebook page on Friday, accusing Sutcliffe of a “dereliction of duty” and declaring he would take the matter to a tribunal.