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Sutcliffe felt that not all attendees were football fans.
“Undoubtedly, international matches provided a platform for Hong Kongers to express their frustrations,” says Sutcliffe.
“The noise of the national anthem gave them a lot of publicity. Attendance increased and many people came to watch the match who would never have gone to a football match under normal circumstances.”
Sutcliffe does not recall any complaints from Beijing.
“The Hong Kong SAR (Special Administrative Region) government certainly put pressure on us to do everything possible to stop this,” he says.
“We ran a publicity campaign. We implemented more stringent security at matches, including searches and confiscation of banners. We could not stop it completely and the result was that we were fined several times by FIFA. “
Hong Kong’s legislature also took action in 2020, passing a bill criminalizing disrespect of the national anthem – punishable by a maximum of three years in prison.
Nevertheless, in the first home game open to the public after the introduction of the new law in September 2022, the national anthem was again played by a section of the crowd before kick-off against Myanmar.
Three months later, Hong Kong’s 83 sports associations were told they must add “China” to their names or risk losing funding. Nearly three-quarters had not done so before.
Football fans rushed to buy the last batch of shirts, which still bore Hong Kong’s former logo, before the word “China” was added to the dragon crest.
Sutcliffe tried to strike the right balance in accommodating China’s requests while maintaining some distance and a distinct identity
“It was kind of an unwritten rule not to get too close if FIFA decided to take away an individual member’s status,” he says.
“There was no sharing of resources or knowledge or anything of that nature.
“In fact, we had a close relationship with Japan, who were very altruistic and saw it as their role to advise the smaller member associations and improve football throughout Asia.”
The rise of the Chinese Super League (CSL) briefly threatened to reset those relationships.
In the early 2010s Chinese top-flight clubs began spending huge sums on world-famous players such as Nicolas Anelka, Didier Drogba, Hulk and Carlos Tevez, while coaches such as Marcello Lippi, Luiz Felipe Scolari and Fabio Capello came to power.
Attendances became the largest in Asia and standards also rose. Guangzhou Evergrande, just an hour’s high-speed train away from Hong Kong, became China’s first Asian Champions League winner in 2013 and won again in 2015.
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