Five minutes. That’s all it took for Kitchee SC president Ken Ng Kin to get back to work after the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) officially recognised his youth academy as a one-star ‘Elite Youth Academy’ last month – the first and only in Hong Kong.
To be put in an exclusive tier alongside Asia’s best academies – and simultaneously helping the Hong Kong Football Association (HKFA) qualify as a full AFC ‘Elite Youth Scheme’ member – is worthy of praise, but the club is not distracted by trophies and accolades. Instead, it marches on with an overarching goal: to produce talent for the Hong Kong first team.
“We celebrated for about five minutes,” said Ng, who became Kitchee’s general manager in 2000 before taking over four years later. He recalled early discussions of building his own academy in 2009 after maxing out his government pitch quotas via club and school programmes.
“We’re not waving our flags now that we have the one star and saying we are therefore the best in Hong Kong and so on. That’s not the way we go. However, it does make some difference in that we want to know why we didn’t get two [stars].”
There are just three academies in Asia boasting a three-star AFC rating: South Korea’s Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors FC, Qatar’s Aspire Academy and Vietnam’s PVF Football Academy. The adjudicating panel reportedly assesses clubs on 20 different categories, including staff, facilities and philosophies.
Given Hong Kong’s comparatively limited space and resources, there is a long way to go to reach that tier. But Hong Kong Premier League leaders Kitchee, nonetheless, lead the city by example.
【傑志足球學院榮獲「亞洲足協菁英計劃」一星學院】 傑志今日宣佈，旗下的傑志足球學院於2021年3月23日獲「亞洲足協菁英計劃」一星認證，亦是香港首間獲此評級的精英足球學院。 傑志足球學院創辦人伍健先生表示：「我們非常慶幸能夠得到亞洲足協...
Posted by 傑志 Kitchee on Monday, 29 March 2021
“We now have a clearer idea of what we need to do to get two, yet we think that some of those things are not so important. Other things that we’re doing – that they may not be asking of us – are more important,” Ng said.
“In the youth football development landscape, you will see many holes and your job is to recognise that they exist, then start filling the holes up. From the very beginning in Hong Kong, we recognised that there was a hole in facilities, not having enough pitches,” Ng said, adding that the club plans to renovate its Jockey Club Kitchee Centre in Shek Mun to include new medical and nutrition facilities.
“We need to look after kids’ nutrition and injuries, but also their studies because these same kids go to school. Part of the star system is it reconfirms [the need] for a good, elite development programme with the academic side fitted with the football. If you don’t give them help with their time and aspirations, then you’re wasting their time – and that’s a crime.
“Let’s not lose sight of what we’re supposed to do. It’s not even about winning the youth leagues. It’s about how many players we get into the Kitchee first team, to play professional football, and to play for Hong Kong. Every year we get about three or four and it’s very difficult to take them all in. Now that’s a good problem to have. If Kitchee can say ‘I have three this year, three next’ and so on, in 10 years we’re going to have 30 top players for the Hong Kong team. That’s the objective.”
Despite this season’s cancellation or truncation of leagues and cups across all age groups, Kitchee have seen similar rates of academy graduates making the reserves and first team. Ng therefore felt it was time to relaunch their previously binned ‘Aspire’ programme to help with the transition.
“We had it for three or four years. We’re trying, for the third time now, to have a programme with dedicated coaches to look not at our team, but selected players who have a chance to make the first team,” he said.
“It could be U-18s, U-16s, maybe a brilliant star from the U-14s who looks to go to the first team when he’s 17. We look at their training, academic, nutritional, psychological requirements. And our kids will listen to the coaches. How often do you have [former South Korea international] Kim Dong-jin as your coach? A man who has played in two World Cup finals?”
Ng also explained the brutal decisions he and his staff have to make regarding foreign players – or those who do not hold Hong Kong passports.
“What people don’t seem to understand is we release some of our best players because they don’t have passports. It’s limited space now that we have to cram them into one [age group], so they go to other teams – and beat us,” he said.
【傑志足球學院一周戰報】 傑志足球學院各梯隊過去一周進行多場比賽，其中U18於榜首大戰中以2:3不敵港會，暫時落後榜首3分排第3、U16則以1球擊敗同一對手港會排次席，而U14則遭逢賽季首敗，暫排聯賽榜第5位。至於青少年聯賽方面，兩隊排隊...
Posted by 傑志 Kitchee on Wednesday, 5 May 2021
Same for the first team, as Ng said it was “not a problem” that they had “exceptional foreign players” in the first-team squad but Kitchee had “a responsibility to develop local players”.
“In our first team we have players who went away and came back, who can get their passports but decide not to. We say ‘OK, we’re not going to keep a team who can play in Asia and a team who cannot’. Therefore the nationality is an issue. If you don’t want to do it for Hong Kong, then you can enjoy your football elsewhere,” he said.
Ng did not hold back on the coaching front, saying there is a clear gap in quality in Hong Kong and cited it as one of the fundamental reasons for the city’s perennial lack of success.
“One of the holes is actually the ability of the coaches in Hong Kong right now. That’s the biggest stumbling block to youth development. We don’t understand the finer points of coaching and how to develop good coaches, and therefore we don’t have good coaches to teach our boys and girls and so on,” he said.
Kitchee, in particular, have been working with Belgian talent development optimiser Double Pass to improve club and academy assessment methodologies.
“We spent a lot of money working with a company that teaches football as a science. We’ve worked with them for months – they take an academic approach.
“Now we’re developing a playbook. In the long term, we need to teach a methodology that will hopefully get them to understand and develop into better players. It seemed to help Belgium a lot!”
