the quality and skills of these late 70's stars are no doubt far better than today's players but by the same token they also were not as good as those in the early 70's....张子岱, 张子慧, 黄文伟 (even though they weren't representing HK), 郑润如, 袁权益just to name a few. When foreign players were first imported to HK in 1971, each team is only allowed to register 3 players. By the 80's, there were far more. This in turn limited the growth opportunity of the local players.
Not only Hong Kong win this match. It is clearly a more dominating team. Lau, although he is the one who scored the winning goal, has missed several pretty good chances. The referee has make two questionable calls in favor of Singapore, and Hong Kong is missing its top player (Wu Kwok Hung), and top defenceman. Hong Kong is clearly one of the best in Asia back in 1977.
HK one of the best teams in Asia in 1977? Oh please! When they qualified for the second round to meet teams like S. Korea, Iran and Kuwait, they lost all their games!
Do you know the difference between "the best" and "one of the best"? There are 21 Asian teams competing for one spot back then, and Hong Kong ends up in the final 5. You mean being top 5 does not mean "one of the best"? Nowaday, there are 4 to 5 spots for Asian countries. If HK ends up in the top 5, Hong Kong may already be qualified.
k HK was lucky as they were grouped together with 4 other South-east Asian countries, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. At that time, Thailand football was still very weak and only Malaysia was strong. The final that Singapore lost to HK was the 1st time Singapore qualified for the final in an international tournament. During the 70's. Singapore football team could not even qualify for the final of the Southeast Asian Games! They were considered a relatively weak team when compared to other Asian nations. HK also did not win the tournament convincingly. A team cannot be considered "one of the best" when they cannot even get a single point in a tournament. Other Asian teams like Kuwait, Iran, Iraq, N. Korea or Bahrain could have easily beaten HK if they had been grouped together with HK in the first round.
HK was king Asia in 1950's to 1960's. HK won 3rd place in 1956, semifinals onwards. Hong Kong players also represented Republic of China and won olympic gold and Asia cup runner up
1950's HK was the top team in Asia.... In 1960's HK was likely second in Asia, far behind North Korea.... Early 1970's HK was still considered one of the best in Asia.... Late 1970's, HK was not in top tier.
![[經典香港足球] 新加坡0:1香港 (1977年世界盃外圍賽)](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
