Lekhwiya 1-0 Sepahan. I'm sure it's even now between Iranian and Qatari teams with injury time goals.
After 4 rounds we now have 1 team qualified for the next round and only 1 team eliminated... UAE's Al Jazeera are through to round 2 while Qatar's Al Arabi are eliminated... all to play for going into May...
Very doubtful. After facing eachother, Lekhwiya will play a home game against Al Nasr while Ahli will have to travel to Iran. The odds are in Lekhwiya's favour if the next match ends as a draw.
Ahli will be the clear favourites to win the match.It was a sheer luck they lost the 1st leg to Lekhiyiwa.
Persepolis 0 - Al Hilal 1 Persepolis played awfully. They just seemed out of gas. There is a reason why they're 13th in the IPL standings, and fighting to avoid relegation, and it showed today.
All of Qatar's four clubs are about to be eliminated in the group stage. Maybe Qatar will try sending five or six clubs to next season's Champions League.
Al Rayyan pretty much got raped in Iran today. If the Iranian players weren't so shit, the score would have been near double digits. When you look at the players they have in the team (former Aston Villa player, Napoli player etc...) and the money they spend, you can't help but hate them for being so pathetic. In that entire team there were two Qatari players, the rest were all either naturalized foreigners or foreign players. Even the team Sepahan beat 3-0 yesterday had good players (Luca Toni if I remember correctly).
We're still not getting the hang of this comp down here. The one-season lag between qualification and entry plus moving finals season deeper into April means the only chance an Aussie side has is if they had a shitty season after qualifying and are rebuilding with a new coach when they finally get to contest (hello Adelaide!). Worse, the public doesn't give a ********, so it's hard to spin good ACL runs into attendance and positive coverage.
I'm glad to see Saudi clubs continuing their good performances in the group stages. Hopefully, Hilal can grab a win at Gharaffa and qualify top of the group along with Ahli and Ittihad.
Ahli won't finish up top. They're playing in Iran against Sepahan and they're tied on points right now. Also, Perspolis, as weird as it's, can still finish on top if Gharafa beats Hilal, but that's unlikely. I'm just glad all three Iranian teams are advancing. Perspolis is fighting relegation this season so it's good to see them in the next round.
Sepahan (IRN) v. Al Ahli (Saudi Arabia) 2:1 (1:0) Al Shabab (UAE) v. Perspolis (Iran) 1:3 (1:1) Sepahan clinch the top position in their group and will have to wait and see whether they face fellow Iranian club Esteghlal or Qatar's Al Ryan in the next round. Perspolis, despite having just finished an awful season domestically, may end up winning their group if Al Hilal fail to defeat Al Gharafeh. Otherwise, if Al Hilal defeat Al Gharafeh, Perspolis will advance as the second team in their group. The other Iranian club, Esteghlal, needs a draw tomorrow in Uzbekistan against Al Nasaf to essentially clinch qualification to the next round. Otherwise, if Esteghlal fail to even gain a point against the Uzbek club, they will need Al Jazeera to defeat Al Ryan in order to advance to the next round.
Al Hilal won their game so they finish first, Perspolis second. Which means we will face Al-Ittihad in Saudi Arabia. Hopefully we'll tear them a new one.
Not at all unexpected. Perspolis is in the worst shape they have ever been, with serious management problems which even Denizli cant make up for. In case you didnt know Perspolis ended up in 13th position in the league, and was actually in the relegation zone towards the end of IPL. But I still hope they can be motivated enough to play well and tear Al-Ittihad a new one
Congrats Al Hilal.. Gharaffa were probably pretty knackered after playing in the Emir Cup final on Saturday night which was 120 mins + penalties... looks like that's pretty much it for Qatari teams in this seasons champions league, barring a miracle tomorrow for Al Rayyan
Can't believe Perspolis managed to have the best goal difference in its group! Most goals scored and least conceded. This is the same team that finished the year with a -4 goal diff in the Iranian league! AFC is a joke. They allocate all these spots to these arabs and they can't even do anything against an Iranian team that was fighting relegation. If Sepahan hadn't bean arabed by the AFC last year, and hadn't been kicked out of the competition for some bull shit made up rule, they would have won the competition instead of the Qatari team. They beat them home and away, but the Qatari team ended up advancing. And why the ******** aren't these games played at the same ********ing time? AFC wtf is wrong with you? An amateur league runs things better than this sorry ass organization. How hard is it to run two games at the same time???
quite difficult in the Middle East where daytime outside temperatures at the moment are well into the 40 cs... that probably has something to do with it. But the AFC should have seen that coming and not put home games in the Gulf on the final day in May...
The way Hilal started the group stage it was predicted but a 1-0 win against Perspolis changed the situation. Anyways I wanted Hilal to play with Ittihad instead of Piroozi not just because Iranina team will be tough its just because I dont want Hilal to advance further in the competion.
Ahli played with all of its benchers consedering they have a final to be played next friday plus they wont face a problem meeting a UAE team in away conditions as Saudi teams have good record against UAE clubs and Ahli will scrape thorugh.