Southampton to play on ‘home side’ in match against Guangzhou R&F

Gao Jisheng

The announcement of the Sports Bureau (ID) on May 3 that the teams of Southampton Football Club and Guangzhou R&F Football Club would meet for a match in Macau in July this year as part of the celebrations of the 20th Anniversary of the handover, left several unanswered questions. The most recurrent question was why these two teams, one from the British Premier League and another from the Chinese Super League, had been chosen to play one another.

The ID said in reply to the Times that one consideration behind the decision was the fact that “the owner of the Southampton FC is from Macau,” which in the words of the governmental department, “makes the choice more meaningful.” It is also the first time that such team will play in the region.

The bureau also stated that it took account of “the submitted proposal in terms of the selection of the teams, event schedule and the conditions involved.”

80% of Southampton FC has been jointly owned by Gao Jisheng and his daughter Nelly Gao since August 2017, when the entrepreneur and executive vice president of the Macao Association of Zhejiang Entrepreneurs acquired the large majority of shares in the British club. Gao is the ninth Chinese entrepreneur to acquire a European football club since Tony Xia, CEO, and owner of Recon Group, bought the Aston Villa Football Club (also British) in June 2016.

Gao, who attended the ID press conference that announced the match, is also the chairman and director of “Lander Sports Development Company Ltd,” a company that he founded in 1995. He is the majority stakeholder of the company, with an approximate 53% of shareholding in the company.

The match will take place at Taipa Stadium on July 23 with the kick-off scheduled for 8 p.m. In addition to this, the British team will participate in a joint training session with the Macau national team and young local players, the president of ID, Pun Weng Kun, announced during the press conference. Pun stated, “this will be an opportunity for the local team and local youth players to learn more and raise their skill level.”

Pun also took the opportunity to confirm that a match between the Chinese and Portuguese National Teams, which has been rumored, would not happen.

ID UNAWARE OF TOP EUROPEAN MATCH

Immediately after the announcement of the match between Southampton FC and Guangzhou R&F, scheduled for July 23, another football match has been announced for Taipa Stadium. This match will be between the teams of Inter Milan and Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) and is included in the tour to China by the Chinese-owned Italian club.

According to the official statement of Inter Milan, the “Nerazzurri summer is set to be enriched with another stop in Asia.” This is in addition to the already announced International Champions Cup, where they will face the British teams Manchester United on July 20 in Singapore, and the Juventus and Tottenham on August 4 in London. “Inter will be involved in another prestigious fixture in the International Super Cup. On July 27 at the Macau Taipa Olympic Sports Center, the Nerazzurri will face Paris Saint-Germain in a top-level clash,” according to the statement.

According to the Italians, the match will present another opportunity to bring all the club’s fans in Asia closer to the team.

In the same statement, Inter recalled how the club was one of the first foreign clubs to visit China, and are returning “20 years on from their last visit to Macau.”

The Parisian club also confirmed the match, which is included as part of a tour from the French team to China where it would play in Macau, Suzhou, and Shenzhen for the “20th anniversary of Macau’s Special Administrative Region, as well as the 55th year of China-France diplomatic relations.”

To the Times, and following previous media inquiries, the Sports Bureau continued to assert no awareness that such a match would be held in Macau and that no reservation or request to use the Macau Olympic Stadium in Taipa for that purpose had been made to the bureau as of yesterday.

Announcements of the ‘mysterious’ Macau match on PSG and Inter Milan websites