Lae City: Emmanuel Simon named the new team captain

The current Papua New Guinea national champions Lae City faced a tough situation in the past weeks with the departure of several important players from their team. The likes of Nigel Dabinyaba and Ronald Warisan are not Lae City players anymore – pillars of the five consecutive PNG National Soccer League titles Lae City had in the last five seasons.

But, certainly, the biggest loss of Lae City is the PNG Kapuls star player Raymond Gunemba that also was part of the group of players that left the team after the Lae City’s chairman Ian Chow sacked the head coach Peter Gunemba. Raymond was the captain of Lae City during all its glorious period, but now a new era is set to start: Emmanuel Simon is the new captain of Lae City FC. Simon is also a historical player of Lae City, part of the last titles of the club and the OFC Champions League campaigns of the club – he scored four goals in the last edition of the regional tournament, but his team could not proceed to the knock-out stage.

Simon is the most important player that decided to stay in Lae City that is now coached by the former Papua New Guinea national team head coach Bob Morris. The 27-year-old player already represented his country 18 times internationally scoring four times. Simon previously played in the other PNG football powerhouse Hekari United and also in Solomon Islands’ outfit Malaita Kings.