The Lunar New Year Cup, previously known as the Carlsberg Challenge or the Carlsberg Cup, is an annual invitational

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

tournament organised in

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

by the

Hong Kong Football Association The Hong Kong Football Association Limited (), often abbreviated to the HKFA, is the governing body of association football in Hong Kong. Its current chairman is Pui Kwan Kay and its Chief Executive Officer is Joaquin Tam. History The HKFA was ...

(HKFA) since 1908. It is usually held on the first and the fourth day of the

Lunar New Year Lunar New Year is the beginning of a calendar year whose months are moon cycles, based on the lunar calendar or lunisolar calendar. The Lunar New Year as a celebration is observed by numerous cultures. It is also named " Chinese New Year" becau ...

as a part of the new year celebrations. The tournament was called the Carlsberg Cup from 1986 to 1989, from 1993 to 2006 as Carlsberg was the major sponsor of the event. Since the 2007 edition of the event, the competition has officially been known as the "Lunar New Year Cup" by the Hong Kong Football Association. This is because Carlsberg is now no longer the major sponsor but a mere co-sponsor. During 2011 and 2012, the name of the event was changed to "Asian Challenge Cup".

History

Initially, a touring team (usually European) visited Hong Kong playing exhibition matches vs local combined. In the period before and around the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, the Lunar New Year Cup was competed for by teams from Hong Kong and mainland

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. Since 1950, HKFA has invited at least one overseas team to enter the competition. Before 1982, there were three exhibition matches in the tournament. The first two were usually played by the

Hong Kong national football team The Hong Kong national football team () represents Hong Kong in international association football, football and is controlled by the Hong Kong Football Association, the governing body for football in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was the first in Asia ...

, Hong Kong player team and

Hong Kong League XI The Hong Kong League XI, also known as the Hong Kong XI or Hong Kong League Selection, is a football team which represents the Hong Kong First Division League in exhibition matches, mainly the Lunar New Year Cup. The team is selected from the ...

while the Chinese XI played the last match.Lunar New Year Cup
by Neil Morrison at the RSSSF In 1983, there was a main sponsorship for the competition for the first time and the number of invited teams was increased to three. From 1993 onwards, national teams rather than club teams were invited to participate in the competition. Many of the matches in that period were recognised as "full internationals" by

FIFA FIFA (; stands for ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' ( French), meaning International Association Football Federation ) is the international governing body of association football, beach football and futsal. It was found ...

Competition name and sponsorship

Results

;Notes

References

External links

Lunar New Year Cup results
RSSSF
HKFA Website 漫談賀歲足球賽事(一) (in Chinese)
{{portal bar, Hong Kong, Association football International association football competitions hosted by Hong Kong