Hong Kong striker’s ‘sour taste’ after team come up short in China loss

Matt Orr admitted that Hong Kong had fallen short of their own standards in their East Asian Football Championship defeat to China on Tuesday.

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The striker, who scored his side’s only goal of the tournament in their opening 6-1 hammering by Japan last week, barely had a sniff against their mainland rivals.

Despite Hong Kong being world ranked No 147, 53 places below their opponents, Orr said he “thought we had a genuine chance to win the game”.

“It’s disappointing, we just let it slip,” Orr added. “We didn’t perform to the level we could have, and their goal came from individual errors.”

Hong Kong have lost all of their 15 matches across five championship appearances, conceding 45 times in the process. Orr’s goal against Japan was only their third, and the first since Lo Chi-kwan scored against China in 2003.

Orr claims possession ahead of China centre-back Jiang Shenglong. Photo: Xinhua

With China in the doldrums and Hong Kong latterly on the up, this had been viewed as an opening to rewrite the record books.

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