Asian Games 2023: Hong Kong football team get helping hand as opponents quit but ‘frustrated’ coach’s plans in disarray
- Hong Kong and Uzbekistan will now play each other twice, on Friday and next Monday, to determine who wins their group
- Head coach Jorn Andersen ‘a little bit frustrated’ about the sudden changes, but says his team now ‘have nothing to lose’
Hong Kong’s men are guaranteed to make the knockout stages of the Asian Games football after Syria and Afghanistan withdrew 48 hours before the competition starts.
The three sides had been placed together, along with Uzbekistan, in group C, with Jorn Andersen’s team expecting to begin their tournament against Syria on Wednesday.
Head coach Andersen said that while he had been left “a little bit frustrated” when he learned about the changes, his team now had “nothing to lose”.
“We need a bit of time now to figure out what we want to do,” he said. “We’ll play twice to find out who is one or two in the group, but we’ll take the next step to the knockout stage.”
Hong Kong and Uzbekistan will play each other twice, on Friday and next Monday, to determine who wins the group and goes on to face the winners of the third best teams from groups E and F, which could mean the likes of Thailand, Kuwait or Chinese Taipei.
The runners up have the slightly less enticing prospect of facing the second-placed team from group D – either Japan, Qatar, or Palestine.
Uzbekistan will certainly fancy their chances of coming out on top in a tournament where teams are largely made up of under-23 players, given the 10-0 hammering they inflicted on Hong Kong earlier this month in the AFC U23 Asian Cup qualifiers.
“Uzbekistan are very strong and difficult opponents, but we will try our best,” the 60-year-old Norwegian coach Andersen said.
“We will try to make a good game against them, and we will try to attack them, and we know we have nothing to lose. At a minimum, we will finish second in the group, so we don’t have to be nervous or anything.
“We are likely to face the second team from Group D, which will be a hard game again, but we will try and prepare as well as possible.”
