ACL2 MD1 - Sydney FC vs Eastern Sports Club - 19/9/24

The Cove
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Eastern Sports Club have started their season with the following redults:
2-1 win over HK Rangers
5-1 win over North District

They won the Hong Kong Cup last season and came in third in the Hong Kong league.

This is really the game we absolutely have to win in order to have any shot at moving forward. I’ll be curious to see how fit and cohesive we look.

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Pre-season or not, we should be winning this pretty comfortably. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a couple of the youth players start. It would also make sense, seeing they’re not far removed from their NPL season. I’d like to see Quintal get minutes after having such a strong NPL season.

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Very keen for this

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But who’s been lying to Douglas about our Kogarah ACL crowds?

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image

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He’s about to find out that empty seats aren’t very passionate.

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Maybe he’s just heard about Passiona?

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Also, have we confirmed if anyone needs to give him a lift to the stadium?

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Assuming he lives in Bondi, or the Eastern Suburbs he can catch a bus to Bondi Junction, and then the 5.38pm train from BJ to Carlton, and walk the 5 minutes down the road. Given he’ll arrive at Carlton at 6:24, he’ll be there in plenty of time to get changes and warm up.

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Yeah but Costa is Brazilian isn’t he? Would be remis for the club to not put him up in the favelas of Western Sydney

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I’m sure the lads have been telling him what to expect in terms of crowds etc

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Some fun facts about our Hong Kong team:

  • Founded in 1932, but the origins of the club go back as far as 1925
  • Despite being more dominant than Celtic in my Football Manager save with current 3rd division club Sun Hei, they’ve only won the Hong Kong Premier League once in it’s current iteration - and been runners up 4 times.
  • In the old Hong Kong first division, they won 4 times coming runner up twice.
  • They’ve won the Hong Kong Senior Challenge League (League Cup?) 11 times, the FA Cup 6 times and have a small handful of other Hong Kong cups and trophies.
  • In 1981 they signed former England World Cup player Bobby Moore who helped them go and win one of the aforementioned Senior Challenge League titles, before coaching them for a season.
  • Under Bobby Moore as manager, they signed fellow 1966 World Cup winning players Alan Ball & Graham Paddon.

Some current squad information:

  • Currently managed by Spaniad-turned-Hong Kong local Roberto Losada who played in Hong Kong for a handful of clubs between 2010 and 2018 after having an unspectacular career in the Spanish lower loeagues. He never played for Spain, however did play for the Galicia national football team which is a non-FIFA aligned "national team’ representing the Galicia region of Spain. He’s won Eastern an FA cup and been named manager of the year twice.

Their foreign quota are as follows:

  • Calum Hall (Scotland) (RB) : Prior to signing with Eastern, he was playing in the Scottish 5th division.
  • Daniel Almazan (Spain) Not a lot of information on him, other than he’s a CB and he’s 198cm tall.
  • Marcos Gondra (Spain) Has basically played in HK most of his career and the Spanish lower leagues
  • Víctor Bertomeu (Spain) See above but also had a stint in Indonesia.
  • Marcos Gondra (Spain) Rinse and repeat
  • Felipe Sá (Brazil) See above. Also played in the Middle East.

On paper they don’t look strong, but I daresay they’re going to be enthusiastic. So we need to be wary of that and not fall into the same traps that the Socceroos have fallen into the last couple matches.

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So team instructions : “Don’t be shit”

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Sounds like the Aldi Gombau.

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The year Eastern won the Hong Kong Premier League they were notable as being the first team to win a men’s professional league championship being managed by a woman, Chan Yuen Ting. She was also the first female manager ever to coach in top flight men’s continental football when Eastern played ACL the following year.

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All jokes aside, he’s basically just told to say this to encourage fans to turn up.

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Until he discovers that a signal failure at Chatswood has somehow disrupted services on the Illawarra line, and buses replace trains between Central and Sutherland. Then he’s fucked.

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Given Alfie had a pad in Seaforth, and NB being filled with so many S-Americans i wouldn’t be surprised if Costa was somewhere nearby.

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Specifically Brazilians too.

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Pretty sure Costa’s in Bondi judging by insta.

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Started finalising numbers and collecting money from students for tickets for Thursday’s game.

Currently at 7 paid and another 13 potential on the way before end of the day when I will buy the tickets.

Could be the biggest group I have ever taken along to a game!

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