Amateur Hong Kong team have Manchester United and Barcelona in sights, after going global with Surpr

Chow, who also plays as a winger for the team, filed an order with kit manufacturer Atacar for an additional 100 shirts, and the club’s green-and-white colours are now being worn worldwide.

Surprise Shirts sell jerseys of teams from roughly 70 per cent of the world’s nations, but customers do not know which club’s shirt will land on their doorsteps.

“I read the article about the business, and was intrigued by the young CEO [Jones],” Chow told the Post. “I contacted him, and said we wanted to show our club to the world.

“No one knows about Apostle, so we cannot sell our shirts like Manchester United. This is a brilliant chance to promote the club around the world.

“We sent 100 shirts to begin with, not too many, in case they could not sell them, but the company would like to order more.

“To know there are people in different countries wearing our shirt is amazing, and I am so proud of our club.”

Chow, who works as a senior marketing officer, oversees every element of Apostle administration, and the 27-year-old was responsible for choosing the team’s name, and colours.

“I thought most teams wear red or blue, and green was not so common,” he said. “For the name, there were 12 apostles of Jesus. In a football match, there are 11 people on the pitch, but the 12th man is the friends of the team. There must be 12 people in a football team, not just 11.”

Surprise Shirts was founded by entrepreneur Jones in 2020. It was only towards the end of last year, however, that Hongkongers began flocking to the company’s website.

Jones, who operates the fast-growing business with his parents, was keen to work with clubs from the city and “promote Hong Kong football around the world”.

Apostle, who play matches and train at the Jockey Club HKFA Football Training Centre in Tseung Kwan O, are bucking the trend in a city where the local game is crying out for imaginative publicity.

The team are going to Taiwan in April to face the second string of AC Taipei, who play in the country’s Premier League.

They have subsequent matches in Singapore and Japan, adding to a trip to Macau last summer, when Apostle played in a triangular tournament with the under-18 teams of local clubs GD Artilheiros and Benfica Macau.

Apostle also have a friendly fixture against the under-18 side from local Premier League club HKFC in the diary.

“We are around mid-table in our league, and trying to sign more players,” Chow said. “Eventually, we want to become very big and float on the stock market. I would like to reach the level of world-class clubs like Manchester United and Barcelona. It is probably impossible, but we will try to keep growing.”

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