Both the other A-League teams have way easier potential groups than Sydney.
Brisbane will have a Thai team (who lost a qualifier in their only other attempt at the comp in 2015) and a Vietnamese team who have never played ACL before.
Melbourne City will have a Thai team (who lost a qualifier to a Philippine team last year) and a Hong Kong team who have qualified for the group stage once and finished 4th, ten points off second place.
The rotten ACL luck of Sydney, the only automatic qualifier, to have easily the hardest potential group of all A-League teams.
Adds to my point before. Sydney qualifies constantly, should be worth some points just playing and scraping some wins. Instead we are ranked below all those asean clubs who lose qualifiers or finish 4th in their only attempts
Also another point, how can australian clubs manage to compete if its in a hub overseas? No chance either of the 3 aussie clubs can give up 6 to 7 weeks through quarantining and the tourney and fit in their season. It is a compact enough season as it is.
I saw them lose to Bali United last year who Victory then beat 5-0. They were down 2-0, up 3-2 then lost 5-3 in ET.
They were playing with a 43 year old naturalized Englishman who’d played 142 times for Singapore. They had a Canadian/ Jamaican upfront who could only be described as an Ian Tallguy clone.
So rather than trying to get through this difficult period while minimising risk, they’ve decided to add more teams to the competition? The AFC never ceases to amaze me.