Kitchee

Kitchee arrive at this season of the Hong Kong Premier League as the club every rival still measures itself against, chasing an eighth title after taking the 2025–26 crown. The run under Josep Gombau, who reshaped the team around short passing and possession until people started calling them "Hong Kong Barça", set the pattern the club has followed ever since even after his departure: keep the ball, keep winning.

That habit shows in how full the trophy room is. Seven league titles, seven FA Cups, nine Senior Shields — the 2016–17 and 2022–23 seasons each brought all three at once, a domestic treble twice over. Winning a group match in the AFC Champions League against Kashiwa Reysol in 2018 mattered more than the scoreline suggested: no Hong Kong club had done it before. Reaching the Round of 16 in 2022, before losing to BG Pathum United, pushed that further.

Dejan Damjanović arrived in 2021 already a proven finisher and left in 2023 as the competition's all-time leading scorer in the Champions League, his goals part of the reason those two seasons ended with silverware. Diego Forlán chose Kitchee for one final season in 2018 before he retired, a signing that told the rest of Asia how the club saw itself.

Home games are played at the Tseung Kwan O Sports Ground, a tight 3,500-capacity ground that keeps the atmosphere close whenever Eastern SC come to town for what everyone in the city calls the Eastern Derby, the fixture that has replaced the old rivalry with South China as the one that matters most. It was in 1931 that Kitchee first took shape, long before any of this — before the blue and white, before the trophies, before anyone thought to call them Barça.