AFP/Tokyo
Pohang Steelers and Al Ittihad will contest a classic East against West showdown in the Asian Champions League final in Tokyo tomorrow, with a berth at next month’s lucrative FIFA World Club Cup awaiting the winner.
Adding to the intrigue is the fact that this year’s final will be the first winner-takes-all decider after the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) abandoned their traditional home-and-away format for a single, sudden-death match.
The competition, expanded to 32 teams this season with a increased purse of $1.5mn for the winner, will reach its climax on Saturday with either South Korea’s Pohang or their Saudi opponents crowned continental champions for a third time.
Al Ittihad won back-to-back titles from 2004 while the Steelers lifted the former Asian Club Championship twice in the late 1990s.
Both clubs have been in great attacking form this season and go into Saturday’s final at full strength, with no players unavailable through injury or suspension.
Al Ittihad scored 29 goals and conceded nine in their 11 matches, including a 7-0 thrashing of eventual semi-finalists Umm Salal in the group stage before crushing Pakhtakor Tashkent 4-0 in the quarter-finals and Nagoya Grampus 6-2 in the semis.
Tunisian striker Amine Chermiti has scored in each of three games since arriving on loan from Bundesliga club Hertha Berlin in August while Moroccan striker Hicham Aboucherouane is the side’s top scorer in the competition with five goals.
“This squad is very much a group and I don’t want to talk about individual players,” Al Ittihad coach and former Argentine international midfielder Gabriel Calderon told fifa.com.
“All of the players are important—every one of the 24-man squad for the ACL final. Unity makes a team strong.”
Pohang have proven just as lethal in front of goal, scoring 22 and conceding eight, highlighted by a 6-0 hammering of Australia’s Newcastle Jets in the round of 16.
Brazilian striker Denilson has found the back of the net seven times, third in the competition overall, while set-piece specialist Kim Jae-sung has scored four and Macedonian striker Stevica Ristik netted in three of his last four games.
“Al Ittihad are not easy opponents but at the same time, I don’t think they feel we are such an easy side to beat either,” Pohang’s Brazilian coach Sergio Farias said.
“If you look at our record, we only lost one match in this year’s competition. We deserve to win the ACL.” |
