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You thought our season was over, didn’t you? Not quite. We’ve been sending some of the young lions over to Hong Kong each summer for at least the last 8 years to participate in the Hong Kong Soccer Sevens tournament and it’s something we’ve had a fair amount of success in.
Earlier today a team that included Nathan Delfouneso, Marc Albrighton and Ciaran Clark won the trophy for a 5th time, beating Glasgow Rangers 3-2 in the final. Unfortunately, information is a little scant – it was August last year before the official site mentioned last summer’s event had taken place… in May! Hopefully that was simply because we didn’t win and they’ll pay it some attention this week.
What I can tell you is that we previously lifted the trophy in 2002, 2004, 2007 and 2008 with Jonathan Brewer, Stephen Cooke, Zoltan Stieber and Barry Bannan being named the respective Player of the Tournament in each of those years. Gabby Agbonlahor won the Player of the Tournament award in 2006 despite losing to Urawa Red Diamonds in the final.
If I come across anything else I’ll try to get it posted. In the mean time, here’s the young lions’ record in the 2010 competition:-
Group Stage
- Aston Villa 4 Yau Yee League Select 0
- Aston Villa 2 Eastleigh FC 0
- Aston Villa 0 Sunderland 0
Quarter Finals
- Tai Po 0 Sunderland 3
- Aston Villa 3 Ajax 1
- Rangers 2 Celtic 0
- Birmingham City 2 West Ham United 3
Semi Finals
- Sunderland 0 Glasgow Rangers 3
- Aston Villa 3 West Ham United 0
Final
- Rangers 2 Aston Villa 3
Well done lads, winning is a great habit to adopt!
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11 Comments to “Aston Villa Triumphant In Hong Kong Again”
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I stumbled across this site because I was looking for more information concerning todays achievements by the young Villa side. Reason being; My son (Jason Langston) who is a keen amateur footballer now living in Hong Kong, was drafted into the Villa squad for the tournament owing to injury i believe and even ended up playing several minutes over a couple of games including the semi-final v West Ham. He has always been a QPR fan like myself but I guess that with this extraordinarily close association with your club this weekend, he may well switch alliegence!
“I guess that with this extraordinarily close association with your club this weekend, he may well switch alliegence!”
You know it makes sense Simon
Oh and tell him “ta very much” for helping out
ha that’s great. all our resources, including lads who are bonafide first team players – although still young – and we’re drafting in the locals! love it!
it’s a pretty low key event, so info is hard to come by, but i’ll keep an eye out.
Well done the kids.
It just gets better doesn’t it?
Let’s hope some of these young lads fulfill their seeming potential.
Some more info on Ian’s site Dan, in case you’ve missed it;
http://astonvilla-views.com/2010/05/16/a-report-from-villas-victory-in-hong-kong/
oh wow, ian’s been all over it!! ah well, it’s better than ignoring it. i hope the OS gives it a mention. it’s not the grandest of tournaments, but we’ve been taking part in it for years and it deserves a little attention.
it’s just occurred to me that we opened the season with a little trophy – the peace cup – and we finished the season with one. now, if we can just grab one or two in between!
“it’s better than ignoring it.”
Totally agree.
These are all small things, but when you add them all up, the kids are doing extremely well.
Probably the best bunch of kids out there imo.
Even if they don’t make the ultimate grade, that tells me we’re doing something to improve things even at lower levels.
Which makes me quite proud really.
we’ve always done well with local kids and have had a share of some foreign talent, but not many have made the grade yet… das hammer springs to mind.
but it’s the aggressive and possibly expensive (for youngsters) way we’ve gone after the likes of forrester, carruthers, halfhuid, etc, that gives me a lot of optimism about the future.
Great news, and thanks for getting hold of this information. Looking forward to hearing more about it soon. Simon – let us know how Jason got on!
i’ve added the flickr photostream to my rss, we’ll see what shows up.
Great stuff thanks for the info Dan and Simon if you are talking to your son let us know what he has to say about it all.