Private interview with Mr. Ken K. Ng (owner of Kitchee SC of Hong Kong Premier League)

In view of the upcoming first and ever season of Hong Kong Premier League, I have a private interview with one of the key persons whom contributing most of his time towards the setting up of this new league.

Mr. Ken K. Ng has been involved in Hong Kong football since his old days as a referee in the late 80's.  He then became part of the management with Instant-Dict and now as owner of Kitchee SC.  He is a big fan of Hong Kong football and he is expecting a change in the Hong Kong domestic football by implementing the new Premier League.

First of the changes is that this year there is a title sponsor in the name of Bank of China Group Life Insurance with a money resource of HKD2,300,000.  The usage of the money is towards all the nine clubs participating in the Premier League with teams ranking from 1 to 9 each receives their shares of prize money.

Also the Premier League itself is now being productized with its own logo, website and market on various social media so as to increase its publicity.  This year Premier League is also to be live or delay telecasted on one of the free tv channels in Hong Kong.  

Ken believes the new direction is correct and can set the scene for the further development of the Hong Kong Premier League.  He believes as long as teams put in their resources and build up keen competitions between teams that will attract spectators to go to the stadium and watch the games.  

I further compared the new League in India with Hong Kong as India is starting to bring in iconic foreign players such as Del Piero to their new League.  I asked Ken if it is useful for Hong Kong Premier League to follow.  He mentioned that it may not be workable due to the following reasons:

1) as Hong Kong spectators have been treated with in form young overseas stars visiting Hong Kong on annual basis for friendly matches.  Further local football fans can see famous European players every week on television and hence he doubted by including such iconic players one can really bring the impact of more crowd to the stadium;

2) further there is cost to these iconic players and whether such cost incur will  bring in a longer term impact to the team and to the local football scene

3) previously there is case like Nicky Butt/Kezman but it didn't create the impact of crowd after a while.  He rather see each team work on some long term strategies to bring the team in a more professional direction by bringing in world name players/coaches such as the J League clubs at the beginning of J League.

About his expectation on Kitchee SC in the next 5 to 10 years, he believes Kitchee with its current well established playing style it could now be recognized as a force in Asian second line club teams due to consistent participation in AFC Cup.  He is not just content with the current position and he believes with long term strategies such as bringing in better coach, continuos improvement on the current playing style and bigger base of youth players coming out from their rank he is hoping Kitchee could one day be recognized as a force in Asian first line club teams as in participation in AFC Champion League regularly.

In particular with good coaches from Spain and the soon opening of Kitchee Hong Kong Jocket Club Football Training Ground, Ken expects Kitchee can build a bigger base of youth players for the good of Kitchee and Hong Kong football.  Currently Kitchee has junior players starting well programmed football training at the age of 6 and by the time these kids reach the age of 18 they shall have 12 years of real football training.  Kitchee under Ken's guidance also partners with a secondary school in Hong Kong to build special program for the students to give the students not just the chance for secondary school regular study but for proper football training since young age.  

Ken is expecting a bright future for the Kitchee and Hong Kong Youths as he points out that the current squad of Hong Kong U16 which is in this year Asian U-16 championship shall feature a large number of 10 Kitchee youth players and he expects out of this group of youth players some would go on to join the future Kitchee first team.

Ken is hoping upon the commencement of the own Kitchee Hong Kong Jockey Club Football Training Ground, Kitchee can generate more local home grown players and that will certainly better than relying on foreign iconic players.  With more local talents, he expects a better national team and a better local league so as to bring Hong Kong football to a new high.