Hongkonger thriving in Sweden after football degree course at Real Madrid
Matthew Mak targets Champions League as an analyst after Guardiola-inspired hobby got serious, via a master’s at Real’s graduate school
If it sounds far-fetched that Matthew Mak Pak-hei has targeted winning the Champions League, the Hongkonger’s ascent to a plum European football job suggests he is entitled to dream big.
Mak, 25, is into his third season as an analyst for Swedish champions Malmo, only seven years after he began “looking into tactics for fun”.
He got there by studying for a degree at Real Madrid, but was initially fixated on the methods of Pep Guardiola, perfected at Barcelona and now practised at Manchester City. “There were debates about whether he was really good, or a fraud who always had top players,” said Mak, who as a City fan favours the former argument.
“I didn’t start with any ambitions to be in the industry; I just began looking at more teams and tactics as a hobby.”
During his Global Studies degree at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Mak estimates he watched up to 500 matches per year. He began writing for Total Football Analysis magazine, and Malmo head coach Henrik Rydstrom, then in charge of Kalmar, admired his work.
“I liked how his team played, and he liked how I saw the game,” Mak said. “He didn’t have much analytical support, so we spoke a lot.”