Like last year, I had the opportunity to go to the HK Lunar New Year Cup and watch some professional football. They raised the prices this year from $40 to $100 (student ticket) for two games. But this was probably a result of the better teams participating this year.
Penalty shootout
Penarol of Uruguay managed to defeat Ulsan Hyundai of Korea Republic 5-4 in the penalty shootout immediately following the 1-1 draw after 90 minutes. It wasn’t that exciting of a game to be honest with neither team really pushing it but then again it was only a 3rd place playoff.
The Hong Kong goalkeeper wasn’t hassled too much during the final
The final was a much more exciting game. Hong Kong League Selection (consisting mainly of foreign players from the best local league teams) were pitted against Hadjuk Split of Croatia. Hadjuk opened the scoring with a blistering free kick that the Hong Kong keeper could not stop. But Hong Kong scored later on in the game (I don’t remember the time) with a header from a corner that really could not be saved. Hong Kong then managed to score again in the second half with an almost identical goal to their first; same player, corner, header… The game finished 2-1 and the Hong Kong crowd went wild. And that’s when I left.
It was generally boring in the stands but about a dozen Croatian supporters in the North End had a lot of fun chanting and supporting their team all 90 minutes of the game.
Hajduk! Hajduk!
The next time I’ll be in Hong Kong Stadium will be at the end of March for the 2008 Rugby Sevens. That’s only a month and a half! I can’t wait!
More photos at Flickr as usual.
Tags: football, hong kong, lunar new year cup, soccer
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