Hong Kong Premier League: Kitchee to fend off Lee Man and rule again, shock relegation tip

Kitchee will begin their title defence away at BC Rangers on Saturday, while intriguing newcomers Supreme Sha Tin go to Eastern on Friday night, as the Hong Kong Premier League campaign gets under way this weekend. It is all change again, with the championship and challenge rounds introduced last term replaced by a regular home and away calendar. We are up to 11 clubs, with Supreme promoted and 2025-26 basement dwellers Football Club given a mulligan. Six teams will begin the season under new managers; the stand-out appointment perhaps belonging to Lee Man, who have hired Giancarlo Italiano, the Australian former Wellington Phoenix boss. He starts his reign at home to rebranded Wofoo Kowloon City on Sunday. The league has still not managed to ensure every match has VAR, but that is one for another day. Here, we have a look at what you can expect from this unique and curiously absorbing competition over the next nine months. Kitchee Manager: Inigo Calderon. Home ground: Tseung Kwan O Sports Ground. Last season: 1st. Summer report: The champions have gone against the Hong Kong grain and recruited sparingly. Judiciously, too. In Everton Camargo and Dudu from Lee Man, and the excellent former Tai Po defender Marcao, they have added three wily campaigners who know the course and distance. Koldo Obieta, the Spanish striker who spent last season in Indonesia, is the only unknown quantity among the new boys. Calderon has promised to seek improvement after last season’s impressive campaign, and he was pretty ruthless when cutting adrift centre-forward Leandro Martinez and Matheus Dantas, the burly centre-half — two of last season’s key men. Forecast: We noted 12 months ago that it was “far too early to say Kitchee are back”, but they have now unquestionably regained their crown as the kings of Hong Kong football. Calderon has to juggle domestic ambitions with an AFC Champions League 2 campaign this term, and after being drawn with Gangwon FC, Kuching FC and Phnom Penh Crown, Kitchee should harbour genuine aspirations of getting out of their group. They have a balanced, carefully assembled squad with plenty of depth, and still own the league’s best player in Rolls-Royce former Real Madrid midfielder Asier Illarramendi. Any team that finishes above Kitchee is likely to be able to call themselves champions. Prediction: At the risk of killing off this article early – 1st. Tai Po Manager: Lee Chi-kin. Home ground: Tai Po Sports Ground. Last season: 2nd. Summer report: One of the feelgood stories of local football over the past two years, Tai Po have not holidayed well. The side that last term won two cups and competed strongly in ACL2 have been butchered, with the owners, Francis and Catherine Yip, tightening the purse strings ahead of withdrawing their funding next summer. In a big loss for the league, Patrick Valverde, a lovely footballer, has hotfooted it to Thailand. Striker James Temelkovski has returned to Australia after one season, while Michel Renner, Mikael Guterres and Marcao have all found new clubs. Lee must have been trying to remember if he had run over a black cat when Igor Sartori, the superb winger who chose to stay, ruptured an Achilles tendon in pre-season. On the plus side, Lee, who has twice led Tai Po to the local championship, has stuck around. Likewise, the fine local trio of Tse Ka-wing, Philip Chan Siu-kwan and Lee Ka-ho, and defenders Gabriel Cividni and Weverton Rangel. They have again shopped in the Brazilian market that has served them well in the past. Forecast: In ACL2 for the second successive season, Tai Po could be in for some fearful hidings from group opponents Adelaide United, BG Pathum United and Lion City Sailors. That is no slight on Lee, merely a comment on the hand he has been dealt. Given the coach’s inspirational smarts, and the handful of good players who stayed, they could still be tricky on their day. Still, Tai Po’s silverware-winning era would appear to be over. Prediction: 7th. Lee Man Manager: Giancarlo Italiano. Home ground: Mong Kok Stadium. Last season: 3rd. Summer report: On the face of it, Italiano looks like a very good get. He has added star quality in the shape of 29-year-old midfielder Bozhidar Kraev, who has 27 caps for Bulgaria and joins from Western Sydney Wanderers. They have given Hong Kong striker Michael Udebuluzor the chance to ignite his career, and also gone local with the acquisitions of Sohgo Ichikawa and the accomplished Jesse Yu Joy-yin, who could really do with an injury-free campaign. In a tacit admission that last summer’s transfer splurge did not pay off, Poon Pui-hin, Cy Goddard, Mikael Severo have all gone, along with Dudu and Camargo. Forecast: Just as Jose Mourinho once sniped that Tottenham Hotspur were “the Harry Kane team”, for the past few years Lee Man have been “the Everton Camargo team”. What to make of them? Unbeaten champions in 2023-24 without often looking anything more than ordinary, they have had a flat past two campaigns despite boasting some of the league’s best individuals. Removing the reliance on Camargo, hiring Italiano and employing a more joined-up recruitment strategy than we have seen from them of late could see Lee Man emerge as the closest challengers to Kitchee. Prediction: 2nd. Eastern Manager: Manu Torres. Home ground: Mong Kok Stadium. Last season: 4th. Summer report: Torres tapped into his Spanish connections to bring over a quartet of players from his homeland, while prising talented young forward Lee Lok-him out of Tai Po was something of a coup. Naveed Khan from Football Club and ex-Kowloon left-back Loong Tsz-hin are also shrewd local purchases. They held on to Yu Okubo, last season’s 18-goal Premier League top scorer, too. Allowing Calum Hall and Dani Almazan to leave for domestic rivals was a divisive decision, but Torres is not afraid of ruffling feathers. Sad to see Marco Lorenz go to Japan, but it is a great move for the gifted young defender. Forecast: The bullish head coach has stated his ambition to win the league but Eastern do not boast the quality of the teams that will be gunning for top spot. Prediction: 5th. We said last year they would win a cup and were wrong, so testing the stopped-clock theory, Eastern will win a cup. North District Manager: Sin Ka-yu Home ground: North District Sports Ground. Last season: 5th. Summer report: A blow for the club that Chan Chi-hong, the head coach who oversaw a progressive campaign last season, walked away for Southern. Conversely, an absolute boon to cling on to Samuel Granada, who netted 16 times in his debut Hong Kong campaign. They countered the loss of midfield shield Elian Villalobos to Lee Man with the savvy recruitment of Fung Kwun-ming from Tai Po, while Colombian centre-back Kleimar Mosquera, from Dominican Republic top-tier outfit Cibao, looks like a sound addition. Forecast: Chan was a big loss at a time when the club was in the ascendancy but given the quality at Sin’s disposal, the drop-off should not be too steep. They blew a couple of cup semi-finals last season but should manage to go one further, at least, this time around. Prediction: 6th. Wofoo Kowloon City Manager: Fung Hoi-man. Home ground: Sham Shui Po Sports Ground or Kai Tak Youth Sports Ground. Last season: 6th. Summer report: One of the league’s more imaginative clubs, Kowloon clinched a very useful sponsorship deal with new title sponsors Wofoo, while outlining plans to shift their ambitious operation to Kai Tak Youth Sports Ground. We expect to learn soon if they have been given the nod to use the 5,000-capacity stadium. Player churn has been a Kowloon hallmark as they have found their feet following promotion two years ago, and another 12 have come through the door this off-season. Trying to assess the pick of the bunch amounts to a guessing game, but there are some excited noises around Nikola Popovic, the hulking Serbian striker who was last with Lokomotiv Tashkent in Uzbekistan. It will be interesting to see how Matthew Slattery fares after the 21-year-old forward, who has Hong Kong ambitions, swapped a peripheral role at Kitchee for the opportunity of more first-team football. Forecast: Another team whose success is likely to come in cup competitions. Fung has a job on his hands moulding a new-look team, although a long pre-season in mainland China should have accelerated the process. Prediction: 8th. Southern Manager: Chan Chi-hong. Home ground: Aberdeen Sports Ground. Last season: 7th. Summer report: Responded to a pretty dismal campaign by making an ambitious move for Chan, who was attracted by the prospect of having more of a say across the whole football operation than was the case at North District. He has been handsomely backed in the market. Calum Hall comes oven ready after three excellent seasons with Eastern, while Balraj Landa, the attacking midfielder who was on the books at AFC Bournemouth until February this year, is a fascinating signing. In Poon Pui-han and Anson Wong Ho-chun, they have brought in a pair of local players very hungry to get back in the Hong Kong frame. The former Sporting Lisbon midfielder Murilo Souza was lured away to Thai League club Sukhothai after just one season in Hong Kong. Forecast: We fancy this new incarnation of Southern to bloody a few of the big boys’ noses this season. Capable of making a fast start, with the onus on Chan to then prevent his team from running out of steam as happened for North District last season. Prediction: 4th. Eastern District Manager: Ng Wai-chiu. Home ground: Siu Sai Wan Sports Ground. Last season: 8th. Summer report: What a summer’s work for this progressive club as they seek to build on a promising first Premier League season. In Almazan from Eastern they have pinched one of the league’s best defenders. In Renner from Tai Po, they have snared one of the league’s best forwards. Attackers Lucas Silva, 36, and 30-year-old Luizinho, from Tai Po and Kowloon respectively, bring experience and league know-how. And show us the Hong Kong football fan who did not smile when they learned Eastern District would provide a home back in the city for Charlie Scott. Oh, Charlie, why did you go? Had he stayed in Hong Kong, rather than go to Indonesia and then Cambodia after leaving Kitchee two years ago, the former Manchester United player would now be two years away from qualifying to play for the city team. Forecast: An exciting squad packed with experience and a healthy sprinkle of the attacking flair that was missing last season. Prediction: This could age terribly, but 3rd. BC Rangers Manager: Szeto Man-chun. Home ground: Tsing Yi Sports Ground. Last season: 9th. Summer report: Appointed Szeto, the former Eastern and HKU23 boss, to replace Poon Man-tik in a bid to make Rangers competitive after three seasons when they fell a long way short of the third place they managed in 2022-23 to secure Asian football. After signing a mighty 15 players, Szeto has promised it will be out with the “passive football” of last season and in with a more “proactive style”. Iranian defender Abdolreza Zarei from Thonburi United in Thailand is probably the most eye-catching arrival. Maxwell Ansah, who has gone to Supreme Sha Tin, has left big boots to fill in midfield. Forecast: Any team with Lau Chi-lok and Yakubu Nassam Ibrahim among their number will score goals but this could be a long season for Szeto and his men. Prediction: 11th. Hong Kong Football Club Manager: Darren Arnott. Home ground: HKFC Stadium. Last season: 10th. Summer report: After being let off the hook by the local football association following last term’s bottom-placed effort, Football Club have repaid the governing body’s generosity with a summer show of ambition. Arnott has quit as Hong Kong under-23 head coach to replace Chancy Cooke as boss. Alex Dujardin, brought in from Tai Po (where have you heard that before) is a commanding defender, while Habib Bah, back for a second spell, brings legs and cleverness to the midfield. Charlie Weston, 22, and 21-year-old Cian Coleman have joined from English non-league, having played under-21 football for Blackburn Rovers and Leeds United, respectively. Manuel Bleda, the 36-year-old Hong Kong striker, has joined after leaving Eastern, and will combine playing with taking charge of reserve team Lucky Mile in the First Division. Forecast: Football Club still have the league’s lowest budget but this might be the season when they do not finish in the lowest spot. They are capable of embarrassing a few illustrious rivals on their day, too. News reached us that they beat Tai Po in a bad-tempered friendly, signalling that this is a team fed up with being a soft touch. Prediction: 10th – and a personal wish is that forward Dominic Johns has a healthy campaign after more than two years of awful luck with injuries. Supreme Sha Tin Manager: Kenneth Kwok Kar-lok. Home ground: Hammer Hill Road Sports Ground, then Sha Tin Sports Ground from the new year. Last season: 1st in First Division. Summer report: After the good news that they had been granted promotion came the hammer blow of former head coach Lo Kwan-yee being arrested on match-fixing charges. With the aid of aspirational owner Jim Wong Chi-chuen, replacement Kwok has busily constructed an entirely new squad, with James Scott, the 25-year-old ex-Motherwell and Hull City striker, the headline capture. Streetwise former Kitchee right-back Law Tsz-chun has come in to captain the team, and Ansah from Rangers is another canny hire. Forecast: Whatever happens, it will not be boring. Wong is aiming to revolutionise Hong Kong matchdays and if the world is fair, a Supreme ticket will become one of the hottest in town. He would settle for eighth to gain a footing in the division, he told us, but ninth will do the job. Prediction: 9th.

Hong Kong Premier League: Kitchee to fend off Lee Man and rule again, shock relegation tip

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}As the domestic season begins, reporter Paul McNamara backs Kitchee to win again and names two potential surprise packages

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As the domestic season begins, reporter Paul McNamara backs Kitchee to win again and names two potential surprise packages

Kitchee