South China AA will seek to win their first trophy for one season after Kitchee won the Hong Kong First Division League, the Hong Kong FA Cup and Hong Kong League Cup while Sunray Cave JC Sun Hei defeated them to win the Hong Kong Senior Challenge Shield last season. South China are competing in the First Division League, Senior Shield and FA Cup this season.
Review
Pre-season
After an unsuccessful season coached by Slovak Ján Kocian, South China will like to take revenge from Kitchee, who claimed an historic treble as they won the First Division League, the League Cup and the FA Cup last season. Unlike the previous season, chairman Steven Lo did not say too much about the changes of the team. He even stopped writing blog articles after the team finished their last league game until 9 July 2012.
On 9 July 2012, chairman Steven Lo published his first blog articles for the new season. He published the new first team squad and the in-and-out player changes. He also appointed Liu Chun Fai as the new head coach, and allowed former assistant coaches Chan Chi Hong and Chan Ho Yin to leave the club. The team also started having training on the same day. However, public media are not allowed to go into the training court.
South China started having public training on 17 July 2012. Chairman Steven Lo announced that the team would go to Guangdong for training camp. The team started the training camp on 23 July 2012. However, there are no news about the team in training camp and the players did not say anything on the social networking website, until the team published a photo, showing the players watching a football match in Guangdong. Soon after, chairman Steven Lo wrote an article on his blog about the training camp. The team will play total of 6 matches with Guangdong Sunray Cave, which Hong Kong and former South China players Leung Chun Pong and Chan Siu Ki is playing in, during the training camp. By the day that Steven Lo published the blog article, the team had a great result as they won 3 matches and tied once.
While the team was having training camp in mainland China, chairman Steven Lo introduced a new player. defender Sean Tse joined the club from English Premier League club Manchester City for an undisclosed fee. Since he is holding a Hong Kong ID card, he will not be registered and counted as a foreign player.
They got their first win in recent 4 pre-season matches on 22 August 2012. Itaparica and Au Yeung Yiu Chung scored once while center defender Joel Bertoti Padilha netted twice, as the club defeated Sun Pegasus 4–0 at Tsing Yi Northeast park.
September
South China began the new season at their home ground Hong Kong Stadium, playing against J. League Division 2 club Yokohama F.C.'s satellite team Yokohama FC Hong Kong on 2 September 2012. Tsuyoshi Yoshitake scored for Yokohama FC Hong Kong at the beginning of the game, but goals from Dhiego de Souza Martins, Itaparica, Ticão and Lee Hong Lim secured the win for the club, although Lee Ka Ho of Yokohama FC Hong Kong scored at the very last minute. Just a week later, South China visited Sunray Cave JC Sun Hei at Mong Kok Stadium. Defender Lee Chi Ho and Brazilian forward Leandro Rodrigues goals was not enough to see off the defending champions of Hong Kong Senior Challenge Shield, as Mamadou Barry and Cheung Kwok Ming equalised the game for Sunray Cave JC Sun Hei. The match ended as a 2–2 tie.
They went back to their home against Citizen on 19 September 2012. Lee Chi Ho scored his second goal of the season but Festus Baise equalised 7 minutes later. Winning goal from Itaparica helped the team to win over 2–1. As they start playing the Senior Challenge Shield from the quarterfinals, they had a free weekend, having more time to prepare for the big match against Kitchee a week later at home. Having won the First Division League in the past 2 seasons, Kitchee had achieved a great result against South China in recent years. Both team struggled to make goalscoring chances in the first half, but the second half was totally a different game. Jonathan Carril's 6-yard strike should have opened the deadlock for Kitchee but his shot hit the bar. Dhiego de Souza Martins scored the winning goal for South China in the stoppage time, thanked a lovely cross from Jack Sealy. This goal also helped the team to climb at the top of the league table.