Interesting photo. Did he sign as a player or a model? 🤣
Congrats to him though.
They seemingly do all the new players signings like that. Well for this season anyway. 😆
Feel it is a good foot in the door for him to make that move though. Paid to play, pretty decent appearance and bonus money on offer, and Eastern are also in the ACL 2 group stage alongside Nam Ðinh, Ratchaburi and Gamba Osaka. So some pretty big opportunities lying in wait over there.
Steve Coleman (when he was at the Nix academy) once said that this kid will go anywhere to chase the pro dream, so I have to applaud him for making a move to a place thats not particularly renowned for its footballing glories. It could yet prove to be a nice door opener for him if he goes well too.
Great city too. Hong Kong Football Club - Wowwee! If you ever get the chance to go there, then please do. You won't regret it.
Made his pro debut last night in the Hong Kong League Cup. He missed the first week of the regular season due to waiting on his visa, which has now arrived.
Played the full 90 in a 3-1 loss to 24/25 HK Premier League Champions Tai Po FC. Beautiful place - About an hour and a half South-East of the Chinese mega-city of Shenzhen.
Eastern put up a far better fight than I expected. They can hold their heads high despite the eventual loss. Lorenz was actually really solid too, he couldn't have done anything to prevent the goals, and his playing out from the back was assured and accurate. It was actually his long raking free kick which was flicked on which led to the equalizing goal as well.
As for general play, well, they were very well disciplined and structured at the back for that first 65-70 minutes, with some good scrambling shown, but the disparity in quality eventually shone through. The Hong Kong club simply ran out of legs against a quality side who are deep into their season, and several steps ahead in terms of overall quality. Not an unexpected result in the end and probably a fair scoreline too.
For a night time kickoff I read it was still 30°C. Bugger that 🥵
1-1 draw for Eastern FC prior to Typhoon Ragasa's imminent arrival in Hong Kong. Game was played in diabolical conditions as the picture below will show - Waterlogged pitch, big puddles all over the show, and the ball stopping dead on numerous occasions.
Full 90 for Lorenz though. Seems to have settled well at centreback, and all going well should see another 25-30 games across the rest of the season. Hong Kong Senior Shield action v Hong Kong FC this weekend if the Typhoon allows it. It's not looking promising though.
Couldn’t say that Eastern FC’s AFC Cup run went entirely as hoped. The Hong Kong side were in the ‘happy to be there’ category after qualifying for Asia’s second tier continental tournament (Moses Dyer’s playing in the third tier one) but after going on to lose every game whilst conceding an average of five per game there will probably be a bad taste in the mouth.
They began okay, only losing 3-1 to Gamba Osaka (Japan) despite going down to ten men and then 1-0 at home against Nam Dinh (Vietnam). But then it got ugly: 5-1 away to Ratchaburi (Thailand), 7-0 at home against Ratchaburi, 5-0 at home against Gamba Osaka... and then a whopping 9-0 away to Nam Dinh to round it out.
That last match was one of those awkward ones where Eastern SC had nothing to play for while their opponents needed to win by ten goals in order to make the second round. Motivation versus No Motivation. Nam Dinh only won by nine so everyone came away disappointed from that fixture. But the thing we care about is that Marco Lorenz, fresh from lining up for Auckland United for much of the year, started in five of those six AFC Cup games and featured off the bench in the other. Even accounting for the rubbish scorelines, that’s a heck of an experience for the 22yo.
Happily, Eastern SC have since bounced back with a 2-1 win in their domestic competition – they’re currently in sixth place but with games in hand that could see them rise when the league resumes after a pause over New Years.
