After 417 long days the wait is finally over.
Having endured neutral venues and biosecure bubbles, disjointed timings, interminable delays and even more frustration as the whole thing dragged on, the 2022 AFC Champions League will be decided, and it’s two familiar foes who will lock horns once again.
Japan’s Urawa Red Diamonds and Saudi Arabia’s Al Hilal will meet in the final for the third time in five years in a continuation of a rivalry that pits two of Asia’s genuine powerhouse clubs against each other in a quest for ultimate supremacy.
With the first leg in Riyadh just a number of days away, on this week’s The Asian Game Podcast we discussed and previewed the enormous clash of the titans.
A sweet end to a sour experience
Paul Williams
“It’s 417 days since this Asian Champions League started from the first qualifying game last year, which I think was Sydney FC versus Kaya here in Australia, and back in those days it was biosecure bubbles, it was neutral venues played in front of no crowds.
Given the vast expanse of Asia, and we’ve spoken about my criticism of their decision to effectively go to neutral venues for the knockouts in the future, but I think what Asia and the Champions League relies on is that home support. It feeds off those raucous atmospheres, those partisan crowds, that’s what gives the Champions League its little kick.
It’s missed that over the last couple of years, and it’s understandable why it hasn’t had it, but it’s it’s suffered as a product because of it. So this feels now like it’s a pretty sweet ending to a rather sour experience.
The fact that it’s taken over 12 months for this entire Champions League to be completed, the fact that a lot of it was played in by secure bubbles with no crowds and all that kind of stuff. we had to suffer through a lot but now we’re going to get the really sweet experience at the end of it.
And you’re right, I think asked most people which final they would pick if they had a choice, and it’s probably going to be Al Hilal versus Urawa because of the reputation that they’ve built over numerous finals, because of the reputation of their fans.
So I’m genuinely excited for this, and I’m excited for the Champions League that we’re going to get this experience coming out of what has been a rather troubling period for the competition.”
Defence is the best form of attack
Martin Lowe
“In terms of what I’m looking for it’s how Al Hilal have always struggled when they’ve been given the ball and (the opposition has) said: ‘you break us down.’
I don’t think Urawa are going to be that kind of side, but if they were clever about it, if Skorza was clever about it, they would go to Riyadh and try and stifle Al Hilal before the game starts getting a bit open. I think that will start to benefit Al Hilal in terms of getting behind and getting their individuals into the game.
Where they struggle is where they have to break down teams and we saw that in the knockout stages against Foolad in the quarter-finals where they needed the last minute goal against a really ordinary team in terms of Foolad. A couple of days later they go and smash Al Duhail 7-0 and everybody thinks this is the best team in Asia (and) the writing’s on the wall, but that’s only when Al Duhail gave them the space to do it.
So I think if you’re clever about it, you make this a really dull encounter, take it back to Saitama and then you’ve got in your hands, rather than going for it from the from the outset.”
Urawa a team of no stars
Scott McIntyre
“They’re a team without, I think it’s fair to say, any star power. I mean, they’ve got, some younger players who are technically good, experienced players at both ends of the pitch – in goal and upfront – but generally, and I think it’s an unusual situation to see a team reach an ACL final without a standout individual.
I think I’m in saying that they don’t have any current internationals, which if you compare that to the situation with Al Hilal, and you compare that with other Japanese sides have done well in the tournament and even previous iterations of this reds team as well, it’s a different look and feel about the club.
But, of course, within that there are important players as well. For me, obviously the two foreign defenders at the back are crucial not just in terms of their defensive work, but in what they offer going forward as well.
In midfield, I think Ito’s been excellent throughout their recent turnaround. Shinzo Koroki is having some form of a career, not a revival, but an extension when you didn’t expect that at this point of his career.
But I think particularly key for me is Yoshio Koizumi, a young player who is technically proficient, creative, (and) good on the ball, but I think it’s the work that he does off the ball that’s been it’s been really, really important.
Alexander Scholz has said that the team’s in a transition phase, they’re not yet where they want to be with a new coach coming in, but I think even only two months into the reign there’s already different elements that you can see tactically in play, and particularly, I think, out of possession.
A lot of stuff has been done to really organize them differently to how they were before. When they’re out of the ball they tend to play in a 4-4-2, and Koroki is not the kind of guy in that system that’s going to offer you the legs to harry and close down. But that player is Koizumi.
So for me, not just what he offers on the ball, even more so than that, I think it’s the work he does out of possession that’s been really crucial to the way that the Reds have turned things around. He’s here, there and everywhere, he’s up and down, and he’s the one that’s applying the pressure from the front.
It seems tactically that’s how they want to play, generally pushing up the pitch when they can, if they lose the ball, they want to win it back as quickly as possible and to me, the key player in all of that has been Koizumi.”
A foreign jigsaw
Martin Lowe
“In terms of defence, Jang is the key standout. Those couple of games where Al Hilal effectively threw away the domestic league was when Jang was having a rest effectively.
And as much as Ali Al Bulayhi isn’t the best, I still think there’s quite a lot of question marks about him in terms of his kind of quality, especially on the ball but he’s another level ahead of Mohammed Jahfali, who we saw really struggle defensively against Al Ittihad the other night.
So I’m hoping that Ali Al-Bulayhi can actually fit get fit for the final, or at least the second leg. But I think the interesting bit is going to be in attack in terms of how Ramon Diaz plays this. Odion Ighalo has been the key player domestically, the top scorer in the domestic league, but both in Morocco for the Club World Cup, and for the latter stages of the Champions League, he was rotated out.
Obviously, you only have only a finite amount of options for your overseas players and it’ll be interesting to see how he works that. He’s usually gone to Luciano Vietto who was kind of an interesting pick given that he’s had hardly any time domestically.
But trying to break down Urawa who are going to be better than the opposition that they’ve been playing of late, it’s going to be quite interesting how they deploy those overseas talents.”
Al Hilal’s Playground
Paul Williams
“I do (expect they will fire) because we’ve come to expect that from them over the years, and we saw it in the knockout stages in Qatar as well, especially when they played Al Duhail in that semi final.
Martin wrote the phrase and his piece – ‘this is their playground’. This is what they turn up for. They’re faltering a little bit in the league at the moment, but they’re hitting their straps form wise at the right time with wins over Al Nassr and Al Ittihad in the last week.
In the interview that I did with Jang Hyun-soo I asked him that very question, ‘what is it about this competition that means so much to this club?’, and, what he said was that it’s a tournament that means so much to the fans. They crave that title of being Asia’s biggest club and he told the story that when they won the ACL in 2021 when they beat Pohang Steelers, the next day he was walking the streets and the fans were coming up and they were like, ‘we’ve got to win it again, you’ve got to win the next one.’
And that is Al Hilal in a nutshell, they’re never happy with having just one title. They want more titles. Sure they won the ACL, but it almost like that’s yesterday’s news. Now, you’ve got to go and win it again. We’ve got to be Asian champions, we’ve got to be the best team in Asia.
That’s the mentality that permeates through that entire club. So I expect the players are fully aware of the responsibility they have when they pull on that shirt in an ACL final. The fact that they play that first leg at home, I think, plays into that psyche that really suits them.
There’s always a bigger build up to the first leg of the final, it feels like you almost forget sometimes that it is a two legged affair. There’s a huge build up to that final, that sense of anticipation, that sense of occasion will be there in Riyadh and I think that suits them down to the ground.
So I fully expect them to turn up. The players are now mostly fit, the team is now in form, so they’re hitting it at the right time.”
Skorza puts Urawa in Pole position
Michael Church
“He struck me as very humble, but also very understanding of the task that lay ahead of him.
He was very appreciative of the fact that he was moving to a country he didn’t know, that he had never been to. He was aware of the football and knew Japanese football fairly well ahead of going to Japan and working with Urawa, but also knew that it was likely to take time for his methods to take hold.
He felt that they’d had a very good pre-season but those first two results, starting with Yokohama F.Marinos and against FC Tokyo were not ideal. But as we’ve seen since then, as Scott’s going into some some detail about, the way in which they’re playing, and they play with a very high energy, they press a lot from the front, with the exception of Koroki of course, and they’re a very busy side, when they when they’ve got the ball.
Embed from Getty ImagesThey knock it around very nicely as we expect from Japanese teams, but I think, as Scott has mentioned, the key I think is having those two foreign players playing at the center of the defense and orchestrating a lot of what goes on when the team has the ball. They’re an interesting team to watch, certainly in comparison to how they played last year and Skorza is obviously instrumental to that.
He’s brought his ideas, he’s had success back in Poland, he’s won multiple Polish league titles, he’s had a little bit of experience working in Asian Football, he worked at Ettifaq in Saudi Arabia, maybe 10 years ago I think that was where he he took the team into the qualifying rounds in the Champions League, and they got knocked out by Esteghlal if I remember correctly.
So he’s had a little bit of a flavor of playing in the Champions League, or at least in and around it, and he knows he knows that it’s going to be tough because of his, admittedly limited, experience. But he has had experience in the Gulf, in Saudi Arabia, he knows what it means to go and take a team to somewhere like the King Fahd Stadium in Riyadh and what it’s going to be like as an opposition team playing in front of those fans.
So he will be in a position to be able to prepare his players, I think pretty well for that. I mean, there are one or two players within this Urawa team who obviously have experience of that, but when you compare the two squads and you talk about experience and success, I mean Urawa only have three players in their squad that have previously played in an AFC Champions League final.
You compare that you compare that to Al Hilal, there are three players who could potentially be playing in a fifth AFC Champions League final in the last 10 years. It’s remarkable.
So Skorza and his experience and his ability to get his message across and keep his players level headed, particularly in that first leg, he’ll be crucial.”
Photo: Asian Football Confederation
Listen to our preview of the AFC Champions League Final on The Asian Game Podcast
