Asian Champions League general discussion

City’s ACL campaign about to kick off over on Watch channel Ten Sport LIVE STREAM - Network Ten.

I’m loving the fact the AFC have chosen a three-sided ground where the camera faces some apartments.

Actually, that seems to be the Thai side’s normal home ground.

Good luck to Singapore Premier League side Lion City Sailors in their debut (as this current entity - they played in the 2000-01 edition in their previous guise as Home United) against Urawa Reds later tonight.

Does that mean 10play again? Ugh.

It’s also on Paramount+, but the resolution isn’t any better.

1 Like

I’m hoping we get a better feed for our games but who knows.

Go city! Win the Asian Champions league!

Nah. Emirati princes don’t need more money.

Daegu doing it easy over Shandong Taishan, 3-0 up as half time approaches.

The fact that Shandong are now losing 7-0 warms my heart greatly.

I’m still not recovered from that 90th minute goal at the SFS that saw them (as Shandong Luneng) go through on away goal at our expense in the 2016 Round of 16.

5 Likes

And 1-1 for Melbourne Heart (given the colours they were playing in tonight). Goalkeeper brilliant to deny McLaren at the end.

Ugh, Zac Anderson.

2 Likes

I still wake up screaming over that…

1 Like

The era of Chinese football is definitely over.

Guangzhou FC (formerly Evergrande) were rolled 5-0 by Johor Darul Ta’zim from Malaysia.

If the stats on google are right, Guangzhou had 2 shots on goal in the whole match and only 18% possession.

From their peak to now, that’s a hell of a decline.

Who would think that the Chinese would make cheap knock off imitation football clubs that broke really quickly.

4 Likes

Surprised the Chinese clubs were even allowed out, though as mentioned below Shanghai Port withdrew. Do they any still have foreign players on their rosters?

Urawa Reds dealt with Lion City Sailors pretty handily, 4-1 winners. It’ll be a fight between them and Daegu as to who can pile on more goals and grab that all important first place finish and guaranteed progression to the knockout round.

In Melbourne City’s group, Jeonnam Dragons left it to late to beat United City (the club with the most boring generic name in world football behind Western United), the only goal coming in the 87th minute. Not sure if that is a reflection on Jeonnam not being that good, or UC being better than expected.

J.League champions Kawasaki Frontale grabbed a 94th minute equaliser to steal a point in their game with Ulsan Hyundai, in the same group that Johor smashed Guangzhou.

Would love to see Hoang Anh Gia Lai spring an upset on Muscat Marinos tonight. As well as Sydney vs Jeonbuk, there’s also Kitchee (Hong Kong) vs Chiangrai United (Thailand) going on in the 3-team Group J. Vissel Kobe have the night off as Shanghai Port withdrew from the competition as a result of the severe COVID lockdown Shanghai has gone back into.

I am enjoying the variety of clubs and nations represented in this expanded comp. It’s much more interesting than four groups of Australia - Japan - South Korea - China clubs.

That’s a bit of an upset. JDT are arguably the strongest team in Malaysia, but has Chinese football really fallen that hard?

Also to be fair after Evergrande collapsed, I’m not surprised their football club Did either.

I thought it might have been an upset but JDT were going at something like 1.04 for the win on Bet365 and GZ were around 11.00 so I guess the answer is yes, Chinese football has fallen that hard.

According to their wiki page, GZ don’t have a single foreign player left in their squad. All their high profile Brazilians etc have flown the coop in the last year or two.

That’s what happens when they’re told that they’re no longer able to be paid squillions of dollars each season. Don’t think Covid would have helped.

Exactly, looks like Ricardo Goulart left because of unpaid wages, and Paulinho and Talisca left because of the COVID restrictions. Cannavaro left as manager in September '21, maybe for a combination of both reasons.