good start for CSL clubs in ACL, especially for SIPG and Suning victory in korea, usually CSL clubs lost points in Korea, but managed to achieve good results in Japan, all of the three CSL clubs has good chances to win their group
Guangzhou Evergrande 7-0 Eastern SC Eastern had two players sent off in the first half and conceded two penalties. I think Eastern deserve to lose but maybe not by such a huge margin. Chan Yuen-Ting most probably should not have gone for a 5-4-1 formation, it is not Eastern's normal formation in the league. If you play other's game then you have no chance. Kitchee played their customary 3-4-3 even against Ulsan Hyundai. They just made sure the midfielders gave the back 3 support. In Eastern's case the defenders clearly did not know who was marking who and they ended up chasing nobody. The two young local players who got sent off were also too inexperienced but I think the change in formation is the biggest problem. I hate Eastern but even I think 7-0 is worse than what they deserved.
Wong Chi Chung is not a young player. He only played for the minnow clubs before joining Eastern FC and played two matches against the weakest teams in this season. I really doubted why Chan Yuen Ting arranged him in starting lineup.
Taking into account Kuwait suspension and assuming the same licensing outcome, Qatar goes from 2+2 to 3+1, with Iran doing the opposite. This year the play-offs would have been: Al-Wahda (UAE) vs. Bengaluru (IND)/Al-Wehdat (JOR) Al-Sadd (QAT) vs. Nasaf Qarshi (UZB)/Al-Hidd (BHR) Al-Fateh (KSA) vs. Esteghlal (IRN) Persepolis (IRN) vs. Bunyodkor (UZB) El Jaish (QAT) straight to the group stage.
Seems so. But there's more to play, Muangthong has better chances to win points than Eastern this season and both don't have teams in AFC Cup. BTW, question. Once they see Iraqi teams don't pass licence criteria, why don't they move their allocation to next MA in rankings? Why, instead, they give their spot to MA that already has teams in CCL - so we have unbalanced number of MAs with direct slots - West 5, East 6.
It would be amazing if we have 1+2 slots in ACL. Will one of the preliminary slots allow the club to drop back to AFC Cup or are they done if they lose?
Of course not. The leagues already got at least one direct slot in group stage is not allowed to enter AFC Cup since 2013.
Esteghlal Tehran was horrible in PGPL until their coach put all big shot veterans to the side and started using younger substitutes 3 matches prior to ACL play offs. They picked up very fast and showed some results. It is good news for Iranian fans but I don't think this last long since they lack enough experience to handle both PGPL and ACL. They were banned by fifa to sign any new player in half season due to their unpaid contracts, this may hunt them down as well. I hope the best for them. Their ACL group is a lot easier than Persepolis and Zob Ahan. Esteghlal Khuzestan are close to bankruptcy but their players were showing some quality in the pitch. That shows they are not money hungry professionals but people who actually love football. They have already surprised us with their performance in ACL. I hope they continue their winning strike in ACL and PGPL, if the team sponsors help the team with something even temporary. Their offensive players Arash Afshin, Nong, and Beit Saeed are very talented and can find each others in the pitch pretty well. They are lucky their group is easiest group in west Asia. Zob Ahan are struggling with financial and club management issues. Ever since their famous coach Golmohamadi was fired because of club manager, they have been struggling in defense line. At the moment they are in a transition to adopt to the new coach but they have some good talents such as Morteza Tabrizi, Ehsan Pahlevan and their goal keeper Rashid Mazaheri. If they can manage to win today's match, I think they might get out of this group despite being in second most difficult group in west asia. Persepolis started the season with almost full power and picked up momentum until half season of PGPL. They are on top of PGPL 7 points ahead of Tractor Sazi and 10 points clear from their arch rival Esteghlal Tehran. Starting from half season a conflict between the head coach and NT coach(CQ) over NT camps gripped the team with unnecessary BS and media coverage. It started with some small issues and got totally out of hand by yellow journalists. It ended up with CQ threatening the club to not invite 8 Persepolis NT players to NT camp. Team is under tremendous psychological pressure since it has the highest number of national team players and many young talents join this team to show their performance for European clubs and national team. There are some unpaid contracts processed in fifa which will hit the team later on and definitely cause problems. Persepolis is not functioning well after half season. Club management and the coach should come up with some plans to motivate the team for ACL. Unfortunately, two good players got into a fight and were expelled from the camp in UAE. This will hit the team for today match since one of the guys was Rezaian, NT RW/RB which is pretty much a key player and the other is Ali Alipour the RW/SS who is a young talent in development to replace our top goal scorer Taremi. Despite the fall out I think Persepolis can win this match.
Seriously, AFC doesn't have a clue about talents in Iranian teams! How is your opinion about other Asian talents mentioned in this article? http://www.the-afc.com/juicebox-gallery/afc-champions-league-2017-rising-stars#6 They mentioned some random names! Persepolis: Alipour(21) is somewhat a distant mirage. He was a rising star in 2015-2016 season, now he is just a hype. People like Chaab (19), Taherkhani (17) and Sadegh Moharami (20) are showing more quality. Zob Ahan: Mehran Derakhshanmehr (18), Zandi should comment on this. I haven't heard a lot about this player. I know enough that the big shot young talents in Zob Ahan are Ehsan Pahlevan (23) and Reza Shekari (18) who will join Russian club Rostov pretty soon. Esteghlal Tehran: Farshid Esmaeili (22), he has had a couple of goals in recent matches and nothing more, any blind Iranian fans know the two promising gems in Esteghlal Tehran are Behnam Barzay and Omid Nourafkan (19). Barzay by far is the most promising player in Esteghlal. He could join Getafe a couple years ago but the team management didn't let him go to Spain.
Iran at 8th is very hilarious. Iranian teams after 8 games total are (4-2-2) Saudis are (3-3-2) Qataris are (2-2-0) Emaritis are (2-1-5) Uzbeks are (1-0-3) Iran alongside Saudi Arabia are the best leagues in the region and then a big gap followed by UAE and Qatar. Al Ahli's lucky run to the final last season is the only reason UAE is so high.
Does Australia deserve 3 teams in the ACL after what happened yesterday and maybe today? They are like the minnows of Asia. They should just be given 2 automatic spots. The playoffs spot should be given to another country maybe like Thailand. Buriram also did pretty well last season.
A-league was allocated 2+1 slots. Brisbane Roar started from preliminary round 2 and eliminated Shanghai Shenhua in Playoff round.
Al Ahli made the final in 2015. Last year Al Ain made the final. I don't see a gap anymore between Saudi/Iran and UAE/Qatar in the ACL - certainly not a "big gap".
Thailand had 1 spot + 2 playoffs. The playoff teams lost. Australia had 2 spots and 1 playoff. The playoff team won. I think these results get factored in to the future coefficients but I'm not sure if its enough to change the 2 +1. Currently we would have had 2+2 on the coefficients but there is a rule that prevents more than a third of your teams qualifying and for ACL qualification we only have 9 teams. If we lose a playoff spot we will still have 2 + 1. We may end up back to 1+2 whi8ch we did have for one year.
I think between Saudi, Iran, UAE and Qatar there is a big gap. You are right, UAE is not far off Iran and Saudi, but I am not at all impressed by Qatari teams.
Yes, they deserve. They almost always had a competitive teams in the past but obviously in this season they are focusing more on the league.
There is no big gap between these countries, these are mostly very tight matches. You could say between Jordan, Kuwait, India, Oman etc there is a big gap, while Saudi and Iran has better teams than the other three (UAE, Qatar and Uzbekistan).