New coach Gary White remains confident he can lift Hong Kong to top 100 after shaky start

New coach Gary White vowed to play more international games to realise his target of bringing Hong Kong into the world’s top 100 after a less-than-ideal beginning in his first two matches in charge.

After arriving in Hong Kong in September, the Englishman spoke to the Post about his new job with the approach of the EAFF Cup second round in Taiwan next month, the first major challenge that puts White under scrutiny.

Hong Kong are 144th in the Fifa rankings, and the first two international friendlies under the new regime returned a 1-0 home defeat by Thailand (ranked 121st) and 1-1 away draw against Indonesia (ranked 160th).

But White remains upbeat on achieving his target, planning to arrange more games for Hong Kong in the forthcoming Fifa windows.

“If the goal is to reach top 100 then my job is to move it as close to that as possible and hopefully break in to it while I am here,” said the new coach.

“But it’s difficult because there are so many games you have to play (to gain the ranking points) and we hadn’t played a game in six months before the previous game (against Thailand) and that time difference doesn’t help.

“What we have to do is to make sure we are constantly playing games and that’s the only way to get points for a higher ranking. We need a very good game schedule for the next 18 months to two years as we cannot miss another opportunity to play international games within the windows. Whenever there is a window, we have to make sure we are playing games and good games against teams that may rank higher than us because that will pick up more points.”