The Hong Kong family behind city’s multimillion-dollar football money pit

Domestically, the sport is again dealing with alleged match-fixing and corruption, has just nine teams in a Premier League that struggles to attract more than a handful of spectators, and, despite the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars invested over the past decade, is slipping further into irrelevance.

The limited facilities that exist are poorly maintained, and talk of developing a “dedicated football training centre”, first raised years ago in the HKFA’s Vision 2025 blueprint, has gone quiet.

The city’s senior men’s representative team has no head coach, after Andersen resigned in May. There was no succession plan in case of Andersen’s departure, according to interim CEO Charles Cheung Yim-yau, who was installed after the sacking the same month of Joaquin Tam Chau-long following a chaotic three years in post.

A family affair

Fok is the third generation of his family to hold a senior position at the governing body. Grandfather Henry was president for 27 years from 1970, and he was succeeded by Eric Fok’s father, Timothy, who stayed in post for 26 years, until summer 2023.

After first joining the board almost a decade ago, Eric Fok began his second term as director in 2019, and was also elected vice-chairman alongside Matthew Wong. In the same year, Fok was named a member of the Asian Football Confederation executive committee.

A former HKFA employee of many years, speaking anonymously, told the Post they saw Timothy Fok Tsun-ting in the organisation’s Kowloon base only twice, and one of those occasions was when “Sepp Blatter came to open our renovated offices”.

Eric Fok is personable, and, according to those who have worked with him, well-intentioned. Andersen, whose success in charge of Hong Kong softened scrutiny of his bosses, said he had a “positive experience” with Fok.

But those qualities have yet to translate into the dynamic leadership Fok promised soon after he took office in June last year.

“Hong Kong football has a long history, but as time goes on we also need new thoughts and initiatives to bring it forward and promote it [as] more than a game of 22 footballers, but as an industry, a business,” Fok said at the time.

Since then, club owners have queued up to criticise the HKFA’s inability, or lack of willingness, to promote the local game.

Meanwhile, Philip Chan Siu-kwan, the Hong Kong midfielder and the city’s footballer of the year for 2023-24, told the Post there were “not enough visionaries in Hong Kong football. The board have not considered how they want the sport to look in five years”.

Andersen questioned whether the HKFA had the motivation to attract fans, sponsors and television cash while being propped up by the government, a view backed by another former FA employee.

“They just rely on money from the government, every single year, and that creates a certain level of complacency,” the source said. “I just don’t think the will to change is there.”

Forward thinking

The FA’s performance against its Vision 2025 targets will be under the microscope next year.

Four years ago, Pui Kwan-kay, the then chairman and now president of the HKFA, said his organisation “don’t have a Plan B if the government stops funding us for the next five years”.

The Hong Kong government aided the HKFA’s “Aiming High – Together” five-year strategic plan by stumping up a maximum of HK$25 million (US$3.2m) per year for five years from 2015. It eventually pledged to continue subsidising the association. The figure for 2023-24 was HK$24.2 million.

In 2020, the Legislative Council, Hong Kong’s lawmaking chamber, expressed “grave concern” about the association’s governance under Timothy Fok’s presidency, and noted its “heavy reliance on public funding”.

Politicians questioned whether the government had monitored the association sufficiently and public money was spent prudently.

The Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau (CSTB) was asked whether it provided sufficient investment and facilities to improve local football.

Its lengthy response pointed out that its Leisure and Cultural Services Department provided an annual subsidy to the HKFA for “development and promotion of local football”.

The CSTB added: “From 2011-12 until 2023-24, the government, through the then Home Affairs Bureau and now CSTB, provided a total of about HK$300 million of funding in support of the HKFA’s various strategic plans, such as Project Phoenix [the 2011 three-year plan], and [subsequent] five-year strategic plan.”

Pointedly, there was a warning that it would “continue to monitor the HKFA’s progress of implementation of the Vision 2025 Plan”.

Growing the game

Of the seven strategic goals outlined in Vision 2025, three were listed as priorities.

One of those – establishing “an improving and independently operated top professional league with stable teams” – was omitted from the published document’s table of contents.

The idea was for a “separate independent organisation” to manage the local Premier League and its commercial matters.

Four years later, the HKFA still controls a competition almost no one watches, of a standard ill-equipped to serve an international team, from which clubs relegate themselves because the top division costs too much to play in, and whose teams have to share training facilities with the public.

Norman Lee Man-yen, president of champions Lee Man, told the Post that Fok and his colleagues “do not know anything about [event] promotion”.

“There is a history of them as the exclusive agency running all Hong Kong football affairs,” Lee said. “Trying to break through their mentality is very tough, but there needs to be a new mindset.”

Whether a change of mindset is possible in an organisation run by the same family for 54 years and counting, remains to be seen.

After the association’s AGM in March, Fok was asked how he planned to advance local football.

“Right now, we are working closely with the clubs and different members, then, hopefully … we can review this whole situation and see how we move forward together as a whole,” he said.

Fok previously advocated some of the city’s clubs joining the mainland Chinese domestic structure, because it would “help Hong Kong football develop”.

But according to Mark Sutcliffe, the HKFA’s CEO from 2012 to 2018, the idea of a “Hong Kong United” side in the Chinese Super League was previously discarded to “avoid confusion with the representative team, and avoid Fifa considering whether Hong Kong should remain an independent member”.

There were also issues over choosing which club would transfer to the mainland, and concerns about “even further diluting the quality of the Hong Kong Premier League”.

World Cup fantasy

A second key strategic goal was The Hong Kong 2034 Project, which set the target of World Cup finals qualification in 2034.

And despite the feel-good-factor surrounding Andersen’s time in charge, which included guiding the under-23s to the semi-finals of the 2022 Asian Games and reaching the Asian Cup finals for the first time since 1968, the reality is quite different.

When the Norwegian took charge, Hong Kong were ranked 145th in the world. They now sit 157th and were knocked out of qualifying for the 2026 World Cup just four matches into a six-game group stage.

The city team has been declining steadily for the better part of the past decade, and has not broken into the top 100 since reaching 90th in early 1996.

New technical director John Morling, who previously oversaw the Brighton & Hove Albion academy, will be responsible for turning things around, although there is little evidence to suggest that is attainable.

In September 2022, Hong Kong under-20s lost Asian Cup qualifiers to Vietnam, Indonesia and East Timor. The following month, the city’s under-17s were beaten by Kyrgyzstan, Laos (5-0) and Iran (11-1) in a miserable Asian Cup qualifying campaign. Players from those Hong Kong teams will be aged roughly 25 to 29 when 2034 qualifying begins.

Pay to play

Financial sustainability and good governance was listed as the third key strategic goal.

A target of increasing cash reserves from HK$11m to HK$25m over five years was hamstrung by the coronavirus pandemic.

The HKFA’s last published accounts in 2021-22 revealed a loss of HK$2.74m, despite receiving more than HK$42m of Hong Kong Jockey Club money, over HK$47m from the government, and handouts worth nearly HK$13m from global and continental football governing bodies.

Explaining how to attract “marketing and promotion for sponsorship”, Vision 2025 proposed to “promote the HKFA strategic plan to help increase public awareness”, including through town hall meetings – which have yet to materialise.

Asked whether the HKFA had the right people filling senior positions, Andersen said the question was for others to answer. It could be a good place for Eric Fok to start when his packed schedule allows.