The Forlan Conundrum: As the Uruguayan makes a quick dash, many question - was he worth all the cash?

The Forlan Conundrum: As the Uruguayan makes a quick dash, many question - was he worth all the cash?

Without question, one of the major talking points of the 2017-18 season was Uncle Ken pushing the boat out to sign, former world cup golden ball winner, Diego Forlan.

With over 112 appearances for Uruguay, Forlan is by far the biggest name to have ever appeared in the Hong Kong premier league and his signing in January was lauded by many as a major coup for the Bluewaves, with hundreds of fans turning up at the airport to greet his arrival.

However, whilst Hong Kong based fans of his former clubs, Manchester United and Atletico Madrid etc. have been delighted with securing a selfie or signature from their hero, many long term fans of Kitchee were left questioning both his match fitness and commitment and whether or not his transfer was ultimately a success.

AngryBoundaryStreet take a look at the impact the “star striker” made in his 130 day stint at the club.

Match Performances?

During his four month stay at the club, Diego made started 10 times for Kitchee, making another two appearances from the bench. In this time, he managed to notch a seemingly impressive 6 goals and a number of  assists. Impressive? 1 in 2 scoring rate and a number of assists isn’t bad for a “washed up” 38 year old player, is it? Well, on the face of it, it is, but, let’s drill down into the details of it a little bit more.  

Of these appearances, 7 were domestic Hong Kong fixtures and 3 were Asian Champions League games. Forlan was undoubtedly signed as a striker for the Asian Champions League games.  With the restrictions on foreign players, Forlan took the birth that would have otherwise been allocated to top domestic goal scorer Lucas, however, the two-time former European golden shoe winner, failed to hit the net in any of the 3 games that Kitchee played in the competition.

Indeed, rather than playing as the target man that Kitchee needed, Forlan often found himself dropping deep and playing in a midfield playmaker role looking to create chances rather than take chances. The opportunities that did come his way, he spurned. At 1-0 down versus Jeonbuk, Forlan was through on goal but scuffed his chance to equalise - Kitchee lost 6-0. Famed for his free kicks following a brace of fine set pieces in the league, Forlan was unable to replicate that form in the continental competition, not even managing to get a single free kick on target, blazing high and wide.  There was also the contender for worst shot of the season versus Kashiwa, which troubled the corner flag more than it did the goal.

However, against Quanjian Forlan did step up. Again, seemingly playing more as a link between midfield and attack, Diego played more like the experienced, sophisticated footballer that everyone expected. Joining play, putting in crosses and creating chances. Alas, it wasn’t enough to help Kitchee chalk up another point.  

In the league, Forlan only managed to score against arguably the two worst teams - Lee Man and Rangers, failing to hit the back of the net in matches against Kitchee’s main rivals. However, at least in the domestic games, Kitchee had Lucas and Jared Lum to help out with goalscoring duties.

Forlan was regularly criticised by fans during league games for looking disinterested and failing to track back when required or help his team mates out.  However, when he was on song, he made a real difference. His second performance was the 8-1 win against Eastern, when he helped create a number of the goals and who can forget the away win versus Lee Man where 2 fantastic free kicks helped Kitchee come back from 1-0 down to win 5-1.

Attitude on the pitch?

When we spoke to Kitchee fans about Forlan they almost all pointed to one event when they commented his attitude was terrible. Kashiwa away in the Asian Champions League. Over 100 Kitchee fans spent considerable time and money to make the 3000km trip and were hopeful of a good result. Forlan was substituted after 72 minutes whilst Kitchee were trailing 1-0, but instead of running off and allowing Sandro to get onto the pitch as soon as possible he trudged off - as if it was actually Kitchee were winning the match.

His poor attitude was epitomised when he failed to even come back onto the pitch to thank the 100 or so Kitchee fans who had travelled over 3,000 km to watch him play.  As all other players came over to show their appreciation and receive consolation from the fans, Forlan marched straight down the tunnel. This was in stark contrast to Forlan and Helio who spent at least ten minutes chatting and agonising with Bluewave supporters over the result.  Both of these instances show that for Diego Forlan it really is all about him, rather than the team and his supporters.

Attitude off the pitch?

Part and parcel of promoting the club and raising its profile off the pitch is taking the time to interact with fans, sign autographs and pose for photos.  This is one area where Forlan has also been a massive failure in our opinion. ABS have witnessed him making a child cry and only agreeing to stop to sign an autograph and pose for a picture once that child’s father banged on his cry window and remonstrated with him. In his final game of the season, rather than walk down the Boundary Street touch line to say goodbye to fans, he stood in the centre of the pitch and asked children of other players to bring items to him to sign.

We know that many fans have been left disappointed by Forlan’s attitude to the support and really, with all the money spent by club and fans alike, how much would it really have taken for him to spare a little more of his time to pose for a few more photos, sign a few autographs or say thank you to his supporters?

We also wonder whether Forlan made suitable efforts to socialise with and get to know his fellow Kitchee team members or whether he treated them with quite the same attitude?

Profit and Profile?

Certainly, Forlan’s signature increased Kitchee’s profile amongst HK fans and resulted in a lot more media interest – certainly in the immediate aftermath of the announcement and leading up to the first Asian Champions League game. This lead to a huge media campaign from Ktichee. At ABS we had numerous fans contacting us asking if we knew what plane he would arrive on, where he would be living, how they could meet Forlan in order to get his signature.

Forlan is something of media darling and was excellent at making himself available for TV interviews, media interviews etc – with him even featuring in an interview on the FIFA website during his time in Hong Kong.  However, not all of his media appearances have been positive – choosing to publicly slate his teammates following the Jeonbuk home match may not have been the best idea!

This heightened interest resulted in record sales of replica shirts, with the home shirt being unavailable in most sizes since February. A contact at Team Station said that they printed nearly 600 Forlan Shirts in total - far more than the normal amount sold for any one player. A home shirt with Forlan 18 printed sets you back nearly $800 so sales of these along with other associated merchandise (the Forlan tee shirts, N98 club jackets etc), would have helped swell the club coffers considerably and gone a long way to helping make the mover a commercial success.

Forlan’s signing also saw ticket prices for Kitchee home matches increased by $30 to $150.  This will have also resulted in more revenue for the club. Kitchee was already the most expensive ticket in the league buy this price rise saw them become much more expensive than, last season’s runners up, Eastern who charge $80. This results in the absurd situation that watching Kitchee vs Eastern at Mong Kong stadium is nearly twice the price of watching Eastern v Kitchee at Mong Kok stadium.  When compared to ticket prices at Lee Man and Dreams, both only $60, Kitchee is certainly living up to its name of the “Arsenal of Hong Kong”. One question that many have asked is whether the prices will go back down now that Forlan has left…

Increased Attendances?

One hope of when Forlan signed was that it would dramatically increase attendances for  matches. Ken Ng had publicly stated that he hoped as many as 20,000 fans would flood to the Hong Kong stadium to watch Kitchee’s ACL matches thanks to the Forlan effect.  However, whilst the first ACL match versus Jeonbuk was well attended by just over 13,000 fans (still some distance short of the 20,000 that Daddy Ken had hoped for) attendances then tailed off massively in the remaining games. For the second match, the attendance was roughly half this with only 6,229 fans seeing Cheng Chin Lung curling Kitchee to success in the final minute (although, poor weather, bad logistics at the previous game and a public holiday could be held partly to  blame for the decrease in attendance).

In the league, despite initial interest and increased crowd’s for Forlan’s first two games, it appears that his signature did little to encourage latent Hong Kong football fans to come out of the woodwork and watch local football.

A comparison of the attendances for the matches that Forlan played in this season vs the last two shows that whilst there has been a total increase of nearly 2500 fans, actually the game on game increases have not been that great and could maybe be better explained by relative performance of the teams involved and heightened interest in Hong Kong football / Kitchee themselves (perhaps due to the relegation of South China) rather than Forlan’s arrival.

Indeed, the growth from 2015/2016 to 2016/2017 seems to suggest that actually there has been a recent resurgence in interest in local football and that attendances may have continued to grow in any event notwithstanding Forlan’s arrival. This is further supported by the fact that Kitchee’s average attendances over the past four years have been steadily growing of their own accord with a greater percentage increase in 2016/2017 than seen in 2017/18 (16% vs 15%).

Perhaps last season’s figures are overstated due to the fantastic nail biting finish we had in 2016/2017 and so attendances may have dropped otherwise this year (particularly due to one less derby game against SCAA) but for Forlan’s arrival. However, even if any subsequent increase could solely be attributed to Forlan than a net growth of just over 2,500 fans in the games he played must be very disappointing to those that hoped Forlan’s signature would “pay for itself” by way of extra revenue from gate receipts.

Conclusions

Whilst its clear that Forlan has been a success in commercial terms for the club, at least in terms of heightened profile and replica shirts sold, many have been left wishing that they club had invested the money on a younger player that could have contributed more on the pitch and been a greater help in the ACL. Whilst Forlan's big game experience will have been a great bonus, our opinion is that playing Matt Lam. Jared Lum or Lucas may actually have been the better option. This is without considering the impact on team morale that paying one player far more than the rest of the squad would have. As such, in our opinion, we would say that the Forlan experiment was a failure. However, noises within the club state the Ken Ng is to continue in the same vein, trying to bring in another big name for the upcoming season. If this is the case, we just hope its someone with a few years left of playing - rather than just a few months.