Would love Perak or Kitchee to cause a surprise and give us something different.
Perfect. I was hoping for Shanghai later in the group stage. I can finally (a) visit Shanghai, (b) tick ‘away ACL Sydney game’ off my bucket list.
I’d feel decent about this group if we came up against them.
We’re absolutely screwed, but hopefully it’s fun.
Group of death
…and if we qualify out of the group stage our Round of 16 opponents will be either the 2nd best Japanese, 2nd best Chinese or the best Korean team.
How can the premiers in the best four Asian leagues all be In one half of the East Group?
Meanwhile in groups E and F, the strongest teams are 2nd best Chinese, the 2nd and 3rd best Korean team and MVFC.
I guess we don’t enter this competition to play easy teams, but it seems we play two of the favourites in every group we draw. Hopefully the AFC allow us to wear sky blue this time! Should be a great challenge for us and hopefully we can escape the group of death. Does anyone know when will we find out our final opposition?
19 February 2019
What’s the feeling on our home ground for these shenanigans?
Assuming Kogarah and Leichardt are out because of the hills.
I heard rumours Kogarah was going to be the place
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Section 38 of the regulations state that everyone has to be seated, which to me says that we could play at Kogarah we would just shut off the hill.
This draw is in the club email:
Sydney FC AFC Champions League 2019 Group H Fixtures:*
(H) 6th March, 2019: Sydney FC v Winner of Playoff 1
(A) 13th March, 2019: Kawasaki Frontale v Sydney FC
(H) 10th April, 2019: Sydney FC v Shanghai SIPG
(A) 23rd April, 2019: Shanghai SIPG v Sydney FC
(A) 7th May, 2019: Winner of Playoff 1 v Sydney FC
(H) 21st May, 2019: Sydney FC v Kawasaki Frontale
*Please note fixtures are subject to change.
Boring. Same old crap from China/Japan/Korea. They need to change the format some how. We need to play in some different countries
Austadiums says seating capacity is 8.5k. I imagine Leichhardt would be even less.
WIll Parramatta Stadium be ready for the ACL comp?
Late April 2019 so we could only potentially play the last game at Parramatta.
Although it would be funny for Sydney FC to play the first football game at the new stadium.
Us playing the first football match at the new Parra stadium would be superb and I really hope the club tries to make it a reality.
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Putting it all together so we can see where freshness and travel impact can be an issue:
| Date | Opponent | H/A |
|---|---|---|
| Friday, 1 March 2019 | Adelaide | H |
| Wednesday, 6 March 2019 | East 3.1 (I hate those guys shakes fist ) | H |
| Wednesday, 13 March 2019 | Kawasaki | A |
| Saturday, 16 March 2019 | Citeh | H |
| Friday, 29 March 2019 | Brisbane | A |
| Saturday, 6 April 2019 | Vuck | H |
| Wednesday, 10 April 2019 | Shanghai | H |
| Saturday, 13 April 2019 | Wests | A |
| Thursday, 18 April 2019 | Perth | H |
| Tuesday, 23 April 2019 | Shanghai | A |
| Saturday, 27 April 2019 | Jets | A |
| Fri May 3rd - Sun May 5th | Finals week 1 | TBD |
| Tuesday, 7 May 2019 | East 3.1 (I hate those guys shakes fist ) | A |
| Fri May 10th - Sun May 12th | Finals week 2 | TBD |
| Sat May 18th - Sun May 19th | Grand Final | TBD |
| Tuesday, 21 May 2019 | Kawasaki | H |
6 games in 22 days in April is tough, but only 1 is outside of NSW (in Shanghai to be precise).
Also Shanghai is a direct flight, which is nice.
Toughest stretch will undoubtedly be Finals week 1, then away in Asia midweek, the Finals week 2 on the weekend. We really want to be in the top 2 so we don’t play week 1.
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I thought that they dealt with the fixture congestion issue last season? Why are we going back to playing games on the weekend between mid week games?
There is one weekend off, March 9-10, so our first 2 ACL games have no HAL in the middle.
Also that game on 18th April is on a Thursday, giving a 5-day break until the ACL match.
I think this is pretty similar to last season. There was just one weekend off then.
We just really need to come top two or we’re farked.