Organisers hail ‘thrilling experience’ as Arsenal and Tottenham bring curtain down on inaugural Hong Kong Football Festival
In an earlier edition of this story, Rachael Carroll's name was incorrectly spelled as Rachel. This has been corrected.
The curtain came down on the first Hong Kong Football Festival on Thursday, with a game between bitter rivals Arsenal and Tottenham that made a mockery of its friendly status and left organisers basking in the glow of a job well done.
By any metric, they would consider the past week to have been a success, on and off the field, including a particularly impressive milestone for Kai Tak Stadium, which welcomed its 1 millionth visitor despite having been open for less than six months.
Almost 60,000 fans turned out just to see the four teams train, and nearly 100,000 passed through the stadium’s gates to watch Liverpool, AC Milan, Arsenal and Tottenham play the first pre-season games of substance in the city since the Asia Trophy in 2017.
