Li Huitang (1905-1979), Zi Guangliang, Guangdong Wuhua, famous football player. Born in Hong Kong in 1905. His father, Li Haoru, was a native of Wuhua County, Meizhou City, Guangdong Province.
Li Huitang is a famous football player in the history of modern Chinese sports. He began his football career at the age of 17 and was active in Asian football in the 1920s and 1930s, and was affectionately named "Asian Football King" by fans and the Hong Kong media.
He was not only a rare Chinese professional footballer before the war, but also recognized as the first chinese football player at that time. On July 4, 1979, Li Huitang died of illness at the age of 74.
According to statistics, he has scored a total of 1860 goals in various football matches, and together with Brazil's Ridenlek, German star Geide Muller, ball king Pele and lone wolf Romario are the world's top five superstars who have scored more than 1,000 goals so far.
Throughout his life, Li Huitang won more than 50 honorary titles and more than 120 medals, including "Asian Ball King". He has represented the national team for the Far East Games 4 times and won the football championship. In 1966 he became Vice President of the Asian Football Association and the World Football Association, enjoying great prestige in world football. In 1976, he was named one of the top five ball kings in the world in a competition organized by the Football Magazine of the German-Italian Federal Republic.
In the autumn of 1947, Li Huitang participated in a competition between Hong Kong and Shanghai, and has since "hung up his boots". After the founding of New China, He Long invited Li Huitang to be the head coach of the Chinese national team, but for various reasons he failed.
The ball king Li Huitang made Chinese get rid of the name of "the sick man of East Asia", Li Huitang refused to serve Wang Jingwei, and repeatedly raised funds for the football charity tournament to resist the Japanese.
In July 1979, Lee Wai Tong died of illness in Hong Kong at the age of 74.