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Paul McNamara

Having long ago agreed to coaching duties with Hong Kong this week, the interim Eastern head coach Cristiano Cordeiro has landed himself with a calendar clash.
“It’s chaos,” he said, a light-hearted comment that would aptly describe Eastern’s embryonic campaign.
Beaten in their opening match by newly promoted Supreme Sha Tin, who have since lost four straight games, Eastern then received two red cards in a 4–1 defeat by Tai Po.
One of them went to Leung Kwun-chung, who duly resigned as vice-captain.
Respite arrived the following week in the shape of a 4-0 victory over Kowloon City, a match lit up by the deft forward play of Lolo Pla, who crowned his debut with a fine individual strike.
The result was not enough to save Manu Torres, the head coach, who multiple sources have told the South China Morning Post was unpopular among Eastern’s players and staff. He left on September 8, along with three of his backroom team.

Appointed in January, Torres was given carte blanche to recruit 12 players this summer, including three from his native Spain, and another two with dual Spanish nationality.
The 50-year-old also sanctioned the releases at the end of last season of key figures and big personalities in Calum Hall, Dani Almazan, Wong Tsz-ho, Manuel Bleda and Gil Martins.
Days before Cordeiro managed the team in a banana-skin fixture away at bottom-team BC Rangers on Sunday, striker Pla, the father of a very young child, quit the club for “personal reasons”, leaving a beleaguered fanbase with wistful memories of his lone appearance.
Eastern had the better of the game against Rangers in every metric other than where it mattered, failing to take a handful of chances before sloppily conceding the only goal to Flavio Tico with eight minutes remaining. After four straight defeats to begin their season, Rangers are off the mark.
“Our start has been typical of the Hong Kong league this season, because there’s been a bit of turmoil everywhere,” Cordeiro said. “Everything is happening so fast, there are so many opinions, and you have less time to actually work.”
Immediately after the Rangers loss, combustible midfielder Lam Hin-ting, 26, and Leung Chun-pong, the veteran captain, were seen engaging in a furious row.
Subsequently, Cordeiro, Frankie Yau Wing-keung, the vice-chairman, and experienced keeper Yapp Hung-fai, back in a matchday squad for the first time since he tore an anterior cruciate ligament while earning his 112th Hong Kong cap in Bangladesh last year, staged an extensive post-match debrief on the Tsing Yi Sports Ground sidelines.
They had a lot to pick over, given that Eastern have appeared a club treading water at best since a macabre AFC Champions League 2 campaign late last year. Across their closing four matches, they conceded 26 goals and scored one.
After a 7-0 home defeat by Ratchaburi of Thailand last November, head coach Roberto Losada told the SCMP: “I’m devastated, we built up something very beautiful over the past three years, and it’s gone. Just like that … it’s gone.”
The following month, so was he, Losada appointed Hong Kong boss after 4½ years with Eastern in which he delivered two FA Cups and one Senior Shield, and was three times named the city’s manager of the year.
Cordeiro, 53, who had two years in charge of five-time Hong Kong champions Eastern from 2013, said that after the ACL 2 humblings, “we suffered a lot and morale went down a bit”.
“But we have 12 new players, and we’re trying to get on track,” Cordeiro said.
“Football happens in cycles, we’d been doing well for four years, and eventually you have one or two seasons where you have to readapt and find solutions,” he added, pointing to the example of Kitchee suffering a trophyless campaign in 2024-25, before winning the league title last season.
“You learn and change until things get better.”
Damian Dai, the formerly influential development director, has taken a step back this term, leaving Yau with the majority of decision-making responsibility.
Cordeiro was non-committal over whether he wanted a job once held by England’s World Cup-winning captain Bobby Moore, saying only that “We’re in a transitional period, and as long as the club needs me to help, I’ve no problem with that”.

He added that Eastern power brokers were “taking their time” before appointing, “because they want to make sure the guy they bring here is going to be fit for the job, and for the idea they have for the club”.
Other than a League Cup game against Kitchee on Saturday, which they can afford to lose and still stay in the peculiar iteration of this season’s competition, Eastern have 18 days until their next match. Nonetheless, a home date with powerful North District on October 9 looks like a hospital pass for any prospective new manager.
Cordeiro is set to oversee the Kitchee fixture, then rejoin Hong Kong to assist Losada for the city team’s opening Asean Cup game against Laos the following day.
A former Hong Kong defender who was the city’s footballer of the year in 2001 and 2005, the Brazil-born Cordeiro said there had been a change in mood since Torres’s exit.
“There always is after a manager leaves, no matter whether they were winning or losing,” he added. “The players are more open, and they’re embracing the ideas we’re giving them.
“Their effort in training has been amazing, and if we’d converted one of the chances against Rangers in the opening 15 minutes it would have been a different game.”
Ultimately, they ran out of legs against a team that, at 25.2, boasted an average age three years younger than Eastern’s 28.2. The district team fielded two 39-year-olds in Leung and Marcos Gondra, who is worryingly indispensable, and only three players under 25. One of them, the versatile 17-year-old Fred Yang Wong, delivered a tenacious performance at left-back that offered hope of brighter days ahead.
He was replaced towards the end by Uriel Contiero, one of three 16-year-olds on the bench.
“Fred has so much to develop, but he’s a kid you can count on to give 100 per cent of what he has,” Cordeiro said.
“In Hong Kong, that’s more than enough. He has qualities, and he’ll keep developing. We’re trying to find solutions, and I think he’ll be part of the club in future.”


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The Football Association of Hong Kong, China

Eastern lost their opening match to newly-promoted Supreme Sha Tin at Mong Kok Stadium. Photo: HKFA

Manu Torres was appointed manager of Eastern in January and left in September. Photo: Eastern SC 

Cristiano Cordeiro (right), seen here playing against Francesco Totti in a legends match, managed Eastern for two years from 2013. Photo: Sam Tsang

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Hong Kong’s bronze medallists (from left) Bailee Brown, Cade Wright, Oscar Coggins and Robin Elg at the Asian Games. Photo: Sam Tsang

Oscar Coggins tries to put the disappointment of his individual performance aside to help the team. Photo: Sam Tsang

Bailee Brown says Oscar Coggins “is the most dedicated on the team”. Photo: Sam Tsang

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Harris Ho during a Hong Kong fencing press event to preview the Asian Games. Photo: Elson Li

Harris Ho (second right) with foil teammates Leung Chin-yu (far left), Ryan Choi (second left) and Cheung Ka-long. Photo: Elson Li 

Harris Ho meets Hong Kong chief executive John Lee at this month’s Asian Games flag presentation ceremony. Photo: ISD handout

Sport

Football

Eastern in funk following three defeats, manager’s exit, vice-captain’s resignation and player quitting after one match


Eastern in funk following three defeats, manager’s exit, vice-captain’s resignation and player quitting after one match.


Hong Kong Premier League

Roberto Losada

BC Rangers (Hong Kong)

After chaotic start, are five-time Hong Kong champions a club in crisis or transition?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Eastern in funk following three defeats, manager’s exit, vice-captain’s resignation and player quitting after one match

Eastern in funk following three defeats, manager’s exit, vice-captain’s resignation and player quitting after one match