Lee Wai Tong
Lee in 1950
Personal information
Date of birth (1905-10-16)16 October 1905
Place of birth Tai Hang, Hong Kong Island, British Hong Kong
Date of death 4 July 1979(1979-07-04) (aged 73)
Place of death St. Teresa's Hospital, Kowloon, British Hong Kong
Height 1.80 m (5 ft 11 in)
Position(s) Striker
Youth career
1922 South China
Senior career*
Years Team Apps (Gls)
1923–1925 South China
1926–1930 Loh Hwa
1931–1947 South China
International career
1923–1941 China 13 (13)
Managerial career
1926–1930 Fudan University
1934 China
1948 China
1954–1960 Republic of China
1966–? Ming Chuan College (women)
*Club domestic league appearances and goals
Lee Wai Tong
Chinese李惠堂
JyutpingLei5 Wai6 Tong4
Cantonese YaleLéih Waih Tòhng

Lee Wai Tong (Chinese: 李惠堂; 16 October 1905 – 4 July 1979[1]) was a Hong Kong and Chinese international association football player, head coach, and former Vice President of FIFA.[2] He is often regarded as the greatest Chinese footballer due to his accomplishments in winning several Far Eastern Games titles with the national team of the Republic of China as well as captaining the national football squad to their first ever Olympic tournament in 1936, which was held in Berlin.[3]

This was also followed by having an extremely successful club career as a forward with the Hong Kong club South China where he won eight league titles with them, helping establish the club as the most successful team in the territory's history at the time.[4] After his retirement, he moved into management where he guided the national men's football team of the Republic of China (which later played as Taiwan and Chinese Taipei) to win the 1954 Asian Games.[5]

Playing career

Lee Wai Tong poses with various trophies he won over his career.

Lee Wai Tong was born in Tai Hang, Hong Kong, just outside the city, as the third child to a construction firm owner before he moved back to his parents home of Ng-Wah County in Mei-Chow, Kwangtung, China at the age of four.[6] His father was born in Hong Kong while mother was Chen Qiongsheng, from Hsiang-Shan, Kwangtung Province (now Zhongshan). It was there that he was informally taught how to play football until he moved back to Hong Kong and was formally trained at Queen's College, Hong Kong.[3] He left school early initially to help his fathers construction company before he joined South China AA, a Hong Kong top division team, as a youth player in 1922. By 1923 he would graduate to the senior team where he quickly showed himself as being a highly talented striker, which soon saw him called up to the China national team to represent them for the 1923 Far Eastern Championship Games held in Osaka, Japan.[3] Within the tournament China won the championship and Lee was considered the young stand out star of the tournament.[7]

Lee's reputation significantly grew when he returned to club football and he won the 1923–24 Hong Kong First Division League title with South China.[4] His international reputation was solidified when he was able to retain the Far Eastern Championship Games Gold medal in the 1925 championship held in Manila, Philippines. These successful tournaments saw him reported as the greatest Chinese footballer at the time by the Chinese media.[8] After these successes Lee returned to China and joined Fudan University in Shanghai as an athletic director. This allowed him the opportunity to join Loh Hwa, a gregarious team who were built from St. John's University, Shanghai, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, University of Shanghai, Jinan University and his own Fudan University sports team where they predominantly played in local and regional championships because they offered the only annual competitions within China during the amateur era.[9]

In 1931 he returned to South China and won the 1932–33 Hong Kong First Division League title for the club.[10] This would soon be followed by winning the 1934–35 and 1935–36 league titles, which was the first time ever they were able to retain the title.[11][12] This was followed by China's first ever football participation in the 1936 Summer Olympics making them the joint first Asian nation along with Japan to take part in that tournament. Lee would, however struggle to see his nation participate in their first truly worldwide tournament when the Chinese government could only give 170,000 from the required 220,000 yuan the team needed to get to the Berlin Olympics.[8] China played a series of exhibition games against Vietnam, Singapore, the Netherlands East Indies, Malaya, Burma (Myanmar) and India to gain the necessary funds for the trip. The team would reach their target and Lee would captain the side against Great Britain in the last 16 within the tournament.[13]

After the Olympic games Lee's football career would be cut short by the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. Initially Lee continued with his club career with South China until Hong Kong was also occupied by the Japanese. Lee was able to escape to Kwangtung (Guangdong) and joined the Chinese Army where he spent the war playing exhibition games to raise money for the war effort.[1] He was promoted to major general within the sports division before returning to South China after the war. After spending several seasons with the club he retired in 1948 at the age of 43.[14]
He played 13 matches for the China national team scoring 13 goals, while he holds the record for the youngest ever hat-trick scorer in an international competition, at the age of 17 years, 7 months and 7 days.[15]

Management career and the AFC

Lee Wai Tong's first coaching experience came while he was still a player and he took a job with Fudan University while he played for Loh Hwa. With him also captaining the Chinese side and the team not having any permanent coach Lee would manage the side for the 1934 Far Eastern Championship Games, which he also played in as China won the tournament.[16]

In 1948 the China national team reappointed Lee as coach, this time for the 1948 Summer Olympics. On a self-financed training course in the Philippines and Thailand, he took the team away for three months while they prepared for the trip to London. At the tournament, China faced Turkey in the first round and lost 4-0.[17] After the defeat Lee returned to China in the middle of the Chinese Civil War and did not coach until after the conflict. By then his team had been split into two, the Republic of China team (later renamed Chinese Taipei as the team was unable to use either Taiwan or China in the FIFA membership) and the People's Republic of China team (which is considered by the FIFA the legitimate heir of pre-WWII China records). In 1954 Lee decided to join the ROC team as their first permanent coach and lead them to win the 1954 Asian Games.[18] He would continue to coach the team at the 1958 Asian Games where he guided the team to win the tournament once more by beating South Korea 3–2 in the final.[19]

Along with his stint as coach he was elected as a Secretary-General of the Asian Football Confederation in 1954. In 1965 he became the Vice President of FIFA, being the first ethnic Chinese person to reach that position.[20][21]

Honours

Player

South China

Republic of China

Manager

Republic of China

References

  1. 1 2 迎奥运，纪念足球前辈、一代球王李惠堂 (in Chinese). gb.cri.cn. 25 July 2007. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
  2. ↑ "Lee Wai Tong". Olympedia. Retrieved 27 September 2021.
  3. 1 2 3 1966年世界五大足球王 中国李惠堂跻身其中 (in Chinese). sports.sina.com.cn. 9 July 2005. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
  4. 1 2 "Hongkong - List of Champions and Runners-Up". RSSSF. 5 March 2015. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
  5. ↑ "Asian Games 1954". RSSSF. 2 October 2014. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
  6. ↑ 李惠堂：中國的世界級球王 (in Chinese). paper.wenweipo.com. 15 March 2008. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
  7. ↑ "Sixth Far Eastern Games 1923". RSSSF. 28 July 2011. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
  8. 1 2 中国球王李惠堂：横扫日本 踢服英伦 (in Chinese). news.ifeng.com. 13 August 2008. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
  9. ↑ 亞洲球王李惠堂二三事 (in Chinese). dailynews.sina.com. 27 November 2013. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
  10. ↑ "Hongkong 1932/33". RSSSF. 20 March 2014. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
  11. ↑ "Hongkong 1934/35". RSSSF. 20 March 2014. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
  12. ↑ "Hongkong 1935/36". RSSSF. 20 March 2014. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
  13. ↑ "Great Britain 2-0 China". englandstats.com. 2010. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
  14. ↑ 民国“球王”李惠堂拒绝为日本人踢球 (in Chinese). view.news.qq.com. 12 November 2013. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
  15. ↑ Ken Salmon. "Magical feeling of a hat-trick: Lee Wai Tong, Pele, Siri, Pontikas, Francis". 90soccer.com. Retrieved 21 June 2020.
  16. ↑ "Tenth Far Eastern Games 1934 (Manila)". RSSSF. 19 February 2015. Retrieved 1 April 2015.
  17. ↑ "Olympic Football Tournament London 1948". FIFA. Retrieved 1 April 2015.
  18. ↑ "Asian Games 1954". RSSSF. 2 October 2014. Retrieved 1 April 2015.
  19. ↑ "Asian Games 1958 (Tokyo, Japan)". RSSSF. 31 March 2011. Retrieved 1 April 2015.
  20. ↑ 李惠堂 (in Chinese). data.sports.163.com. Archived from the original on 26 April 2015. Retrieved 1 April 2015.
  21. ↑ 征戰奧運揚名歐洲 中國球王李惠堂 (in Chinese). beyondnewsnet.com. 14 November 2014. Retrieved 23 January 2018.
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