Lee Wai Tong

Lee Wai Tong or Li Huitang (Chinese: 李惠堂; 16 October 1905 – 4 July 1979) was a Chinese international association football player and head coach. He is often regarded as the greatest Chinese footballer due to his accomplishments in winning several Far Eastern Games titles with the national team as well as captaining the national football squad to their first ever Olympic tournament in 1936, which was held in Berlin. This was also followed by having an extremely successful club career where he predominantly played for South China and helped establish the club in being the most successful team in Hong Kong history. After his retirement, he moved into management where he guided Republic of China to win the 1954 Asian Games.

Playing career

Lee Wai Tong was born in Tai Hang, Hong Kong as the third child to a construction firm owner before he moved back to his parents home of Wuhua County in Meizhou, Guangdong, China at the age of four. It was there that he was informally taught how to play football until to moved back to Hong Kong and was formally trained at Queen's College, Hong Kong. He left school early initially to help his fathers construction company before he joined South China AA 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 Chinese national football team to represent them for the 1923 Far Eastern Championship Games held in Osaka, Japan. Within the tournament China won the championship and Lee was considered the young stand out star of the tournament.