All eyes will be on Jeddah over the next eight days as Asia’s best converge on the shores of the Red Sea for the finale to the AFC Champions League Elite.
With all remaining games from the quarter-finals onwards being played in Jeddah, the eyes of Asia, and indeed the world, will be watching to see who is crowned kings of Asia for 2025.
While most expect that to be one of the three Saudi sides remaining in the competition, which of the others can challenge Al Hilal, Al Nassr and Al Ahli and perhaps pinch an historic continental title?
On The Asian Game Podcast this week, we discussed the hopes of some of the teams that could possibly challenge for silverware.
Gwangju a banana skin for Al Hilal
Paul Williams
Gwangju were one of the best sides, and they’re not historically a strong team in Korea, but they were one of the best sides in the East Zone. They surprised a lot of people, and are actually in good form domestically at the moment. Marinos may have a higher profile, but you look at their form domestically, they come into this in in terrible form, whereas Gwangju come in, I think they’ve won three of their last four domestically. They were second on the table.
So I think on paper, they’ve got the toughest opponent, and Lee Jung-ho, their coach, is a really interesting manager. He sort of breaks the Korean mould in a lot of ways, he’s eccentric in a lot of ways, with the glasses that he wears, with the outfits that he wears. He cites progressive managers like Ange Postecoglou as his inspiration, and while his teams may not necessarily always play that style of football, he’s not your tried and tested Korean football manager.
And in a player like Jasir Asani they’ve got a genuine star too, who turned the game against Vissel Kobe and can turn a game in a moment. So I think Hilal coming up against them in the quarter-finals is a banana skin, because their form has nosedived domestically as well.
Marinos a mess but still have the quality
Scott McIntyre
They have the quality. I mean, they’re not the favorites. I think you’re both right in saying that it will probably come one of the three Saudi clubs, but that’s not to say the Japanese clubs in particular, which obviously I follow very closely over here, that they’re not capable of doing it.
The Marinos situation is a very interesting one, because the the recent history of the club was built, as we all know, with a very strong Australian influence and flavor, firstly with with Ange Postcoglou, and then with Kevin Muscat after that, and built with a real identity and a philosophy and a way of playing. And then they really went back on that at the start of this year. I mean, they reversed in completely the opposite direction by bringing in someone who was untested at club level, who had hardly coached, to be honest, ever at club level, and came as an assistant at England.
And obviously there were issues, as we know, there in that setup, where players had fallen out with Steve Holland and refused to play, with the stories that you read from the British press, because of him. So I don’t know if there was something there in terms of the man, the man management of it all, but certainly tactically, it was clear from the start that they were trying to – and there’s parallels we can get on to in a minute with with Kawasaki, both historically, certainly in recent times, clubs that like to attack, like to be aggressive, set the tempo, like to score a lot of goals, but both of which had issues defensively.
Both made coaching changes. Shigetoshi Hasebe coming in from (Avispa) Fukuoka to Kawasaki and Holland, coming in from the England setup previously to Marinos with the intention being to keep the attacking intent of the of the teams, but toughen them up defensively, and that ideally is then the mix to go on and and have success.
It’s worked pretty well at Kawasaki, actually, better than I thought it might have, but what happened at Marinos is it’s just gone totally off the rails. Because it all started with the gutting of the squad defensively, which is really weird, because that was where the strength of the whole thing was supposed to come. I think they got rid of seven, I mean that played with the back four, but they got rid of the starters and pretty much the back-up at each one of those positions in the off-season, and hardly replaced them, so I don’t know what was going on.
And they they bought in the Columbian, (Jeison) Quiñónes, who looks good, but got injured. They bought in (Thomas) Deng in pre-season, who got injured, (Ken) Matsubara the right back got injured early on, and they had no cover because they sold the back-up right cover. So they’ve had to play Ryo Miyaichi, who’s had like, a decade worth of issues, and he’s a flying winger, and so he’s been playing right back for them.
And then they’ve had issues that left back. And then the guys that they did have to cover Taiki Watanabe, and these guys, they’ve been injured as well. So there’s no depth at all.
So, they went with this defensive approach, but they gutted the defense. So it’s really odd to start with, and then he totally reeled them in going forward, he’s dropped Elber for pretty much all season. He’s not really been in the squad. He’s rotated Yan Matheus and Anderson (Lopes) more than (previous years).
So he was just careening towards this finish, where you could see it ending, and I guess credit to Marinos that they did it quicker than maybe other clubs would have done. You know, maybe a lot of clubs would have said, Okay, we’ve set it up this way. We’ll let him go to the to the Champions League, and we’ll see. So it was a mess. They made the change. They brought in Patrick Kisnorbo in a temporary capacity, and they got fairly well rolled by (Urawa) Reds at the weekend.
But they have the players. If Anderson’s fit, you would assume now that Elber will be back in the frame, and of course Yan is a dangerous player as well. So they’ve got three very, very dangerous… and I should say, as well Daiya Tono has come in in the off-season from Kawasaki, a versatile kind of forward, can play on either side, can play through the middle, can play out front, if he needs to, as well. He’s been really good for them this year, probably their best player that they’ve had.
So, yeah, they’ve got creativity and they’ve got goals in them and who knows? It may well be enough. You wouldn’t think so, but they certainly have goals and goal scorers and creators to damage teams.
Which Al Sadd will turn up?
Paul Williams
You never really know with with Al Sadd, they’re a bit like the the Qatar national team. It depends on what team you get on any given day, and it depends on the mood and the form of Akram Afif, as well.
In terms of what Al Sadd can produce, you sort of said that Kawasaki are a little bit of a joker in the pack that could potentially go all the way, and Al Sadd is another one of those, if they can string just three games together, and we’ve seen the Qatar national team do it in tournaments in the past. But you know, Al Sadd, if they can get Akram Afif going, because they started the season really slowly under Felix Sanchez, and there was a lot of pressure on him, but they stuck by him, and they finished the season with a wet sail, they only lost one of their final 17 games. They overhauled the deficit they had to Al Duhail and won the league in the end.
And it was largely on the back of Akram Afif. I mean, he’s the the barometer for probably not just this side, but for Qatari football overall. And if he turns up and is in the mood to perform, and Michael, you spoke to him at the AFC Awards, and he spoke about how much he wants to win this competition for Al Saad, if he has that motivation to come in and and can sort of throw his teammates on his back, so to speak, and drive them forward… we’ve seen him do it before.
The other really interesting thing is in the League Stage, they played the three Saudi sides in the League Stage, and they only lost one of those to Al Ahli, they drew with Al Hilal, and they actually beat Al Nassr in Riyadh. If they get past Kawasaki, you suspect they probably play Al Nassr, who we probably expect to get past Yokohama, so they can go into that game with confidence, knowing that they can beat them in in Saudi Arabia.
So, they’re a really interesting team, because you can’t discount them, but they’ve been so flaky in this competition over the last four or five years, that you can’t be confident with them either that they are going to live up to the potential that they that they have. I mean, they could just as easily come out and get beaten 5-0 by Kawasaki as they could turn around and beat Kawasaki 3-0. You just don’t know what side is is going to show up.
New look Kawasaki good enough to win it
Scott McIntyre
They’ve been pretty good, actually. The particular way of the J. League at the moment is that everything’s been tightly crammed, particularly for these clubs that that are off in Asia. They’ve also had other matches rescheduled as well. So I think Frontale played like something crazy, like six matches in 20 days or something like this in the build up to this tournament. So from that perspective, it’s also hard to gauge form because you’re dealing with rotated squads, and they’ve also been hit pretty hard by injury.
Jesiel, such a shame man, because he’s fit he was three or four years ago, maybe the best defender, or one of the best defenders in Asia. But he’s done a couple of ACLs, and he’s in and out. He finally got back, and then he was straight back out again. And they’ve lost a few players in central midfielder, Tachibanada is out at the moment as well. They’ve brought some interesting younger players through, obviously Kota Takai was in the national team and earned some plaudits. I’m not necessarily sold on him as the future of the national team or anything like that, but he’s a serviceable player.
But the one I do really like, and who’s been getting quite a bit of action early in the season was one of the stars of the under-20 team that obviously did well is Yuto Ozeki, the central midfielder. I think he’s a really good player, and he’s got a really good future as well. Also, Sota Miura has had injury issues since many thought he got that strange call up to the Japan national team from from J2 when he was at Kofu, but he’s strung together a run a matches now and he’s been excellent. He’s set up a lot, almost half the goals have come from balls from him. So he’s a he’s a good player.
And then you have Yuichi Maruyama, the veteran defender who’s a really sound kind of player. So you’ve got him basically stationed alongside (Kota) Takai. So there’s something solid about the defence. They’ve got rid of Jung (Sung-ryong), the Korean keeper who’s been there forever, he’s now the backup, and Louis Yamaguchi, the French-Japanese keeper has had that number one shirt and done reasonably well, and they’ve got solidity.
I think they’re probably in a bit better position to do better than than Marinos are. But they don’t have the individuals that that Marinos have. They don’t have an Anderson Lopers, they don’t have Yan Matheus and they don’t have an Elber, but they’ve got a solid base there. They’re now well organized there. They’re hard to break down, and they still got enough creativity in Marcinho and maybe the old fox, (Akihiro) Ienaga.
But it’s great to see this team, although it doesn’t really resemble the one that was at the height of its powers three or four years ago, but it’s great to see Kawasaki, who were one of the dominant Japanese teams of the modern era, finally getting a chance to go on to this stage and show what they can do.
The fact that they don’t have one of the host clubs gives them a good shot, I think, to get through. And then from there, they have the players to cause danger, and they have the organisation as a team, a real unity and a cohesion and a mixture of veterans and younger players. I think they’ve got the elements there, and if there was going to be a team that wins it, maybe outside of one of the Saudi clubs, I think it could well be Frontale.
Listen to Episode 243 of The Asian Game Podcast as we preview the AFC Champions League Elite Finals.
