“I honestly cannot believe it, Lionel Messi was my idol growing up, and I never thought in my life I would get the chance to play against him,” Hall said. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“I had no idea foreign players would be involved for Hong Kong. It is an honour to be picked, and beyond a dream come true.”

Part of the 25-man squad selected for a Hong Kong XI, Hall says being let go by Hibs at 16 was “hurtful, but, looking back, the best thing that could have happened to me”.

The right back initially joined lower division Edinburgh City, but in 2020 transferred to Gala Fairydean, who play in the fifth-tier Lowland League, for regular game time.

“I had to stay at school, and was playing football with men,” Hall said. “When I moved to Gala, they were located more than one hour from home, so I was up at 5.30am, working from 7am until around 5pm, then straight to training, and arriving home at 11pm.

“They were the toughest years of my life. My passion for football never died, but playing professionally got farther and farther away.

“I could have followed other paths, and lost my focus. I am a very social guy, but I knew the boundaries I had to keep within.

“I had to live a bit, have an occasional drink and relax. Football is not your best friend every day, but I trained as much as possible. My parents were a massive influence, I am from a working class family and was taught from young to look after myself and never give up. My mum always told me to keep chasing my dreams.”

Three months after Messi won the World Cup with Argentina in December 2022, Hall was celebrating Gala Fairydean’s East of Scotland Cup final success against Linlithgow Rose.

“I was so proud to win that silverware for the club, because they gave me a chance after Edinburgh City did not work out,” Hall said.

Former Gala assistant Eddie Mangan, who works on the Eastern back-room staff, called out of the blue offering a trial.

Hall’s five-year apprenticeship as heating engineer apprenticeship was finishing, and he grabbed an opportunity that was “all or nothing, for me”.

“I got on the plane focused on making sure I was not going home any time soon,” he said. “Being a full-time footballer was always my dream. However long it lasts, I have achieved it.”

Hall had “never been away from my parents for longer than two weeks”, and visited Hong Kong only once, on a cruise stop-off in 2019. But he is planning a long stay in “the best city in the world”.

“You could never get bored of living here,” he said. “Playing football in Hong Kong is magical. I would love one day to get my passport and represent Hong Kong.”

The fair-skinned Hall was nevertheless “really worried if people would trust me to play football here” after he collapsed from sunstroke during a preseason game against Lee Man.

“I felt so far from home. I am a mummy’s boy, and had no family here,” he said. “It was scary. I felt I had taken one step forwards, and five back. I was embarrassed … thinking, ‘Why did that have to be me? But if it was going to be anybody, it was going to be me.”

Watching the 2022 World Cup on television, Hall, who has made 17 appearances for Eastern, joked with his brother about representing Scotland, or one day playing against Messi.

“To go from playing part-time football and working on construction sites, to being full-time, then playing against Lionel Messi is crazy,” he said.