Hong Kong football chiefs look set to miss out on adding a gifted young attacker to the city’s representative team after he targeted playing in World Cups for his native Switzerland.
Aaron Keller moved to Hong Kong when he was three months old because of his Swiss father’s instructor job with Cathay Pacific.
At the age of 12, he left his family behind to follow his dream of becoming a professional footballer at the German Football Boarding School, where he was a teammate of Michael Udebuluzor – the Hong Kong-born striker who now does play for the city.
Keller, who while in Hong Kong was a pupil at Peak School and then attended Harrow, said he learned to love the game at Hong Kong Football Club, which he joined aged eight. He is still in touch with his old coaches, Wilfred Wong, Nam Nguyen and Mark Grainger.
But he said: “If I wanted to take football seriously, I had to go to Europe and through their system.”
Keller needed around six months to adapt off the field. On it, he was shocked to discover that being “one of the more talented players in Hong Kong” did not translate into matching Germany’s best youngsters, but he improved with high-quality training, coaching and opposition.
