AFC Women's Champions League 2024/25

And she almost died to score the first one of them!

I don't know very much Chinese, so I can't actually read lips, but I've got some rough idea of what the Chinese Goalkeeper said after the second goal.

Seriously, though: Wuhan took two goals from carbon copy counterattack-actions cutting apart their whole defense: allowing one is somehow excusable, but they should have known better than having it happen again a few minutes later.

 

Agreed. There is not many excuses for Wuhan to have played with such a high line on the dying minutes of the game with only a 1-0 lead.

 

Still 3-0 and we're nearing the end of the match. Still one-sided, but I'm impressed at Sabah FA's goalkeeper (Nurul Azurin Mazlan). She is short, but not afraid of coming out of her line. Saved some 1v1 and prevented others of happening. Stopped the PK in 1st half even though Incheon Red Angels scored anyway on the rebound. If it's only 3-0 right now, it's thanks to her.

 

They could actually end topping their group: shouldn't be so hard for them to score a lot of goals to Sabah, who looked very poor in both their games. At that point, Hyundai Steel Red Angels should win with a similar score vs Wuhan Jiangda to keep the 1st place, since at the moment they have just a +2 advantage in goal difference over Abu Dhabi.

Having the South Korean team as a 2nd-placed team could be annoying for the group winners who should find them on their path in the quarter-finals (likely Urawa or Melbourne); unless they end being the best 2nd-placed team, that would seem a given if they'd actually win their game, go at 7 points and only end at 2nd-place by goal difference (the best 2nd-place team will be seeded in the quarter-finals, along with the three group winners).

But I guess it's too early for these calculations: I guess there are quite some intricacies, depending on which team is the best 2nd-placed one and which teams are the best 3rd-placed ones. It's quite difficult, right now, to figure the exact quarter-finals pairings, isn't it?

Anyway, Abu Dhabi are the surprise so far. Group B looks like the most balanced one (Melbourne City have only beaten the Iranian side by an one goal margin ), while Group C seems very soft to Urawa and it doesn't look like they will be much challenged: Ho Chi Minh City won their first game and they are the host of the group so they have the home advantage, but I am not holding my breath to see them upset Urawa Reds Ladies in any way.

As I already wrote on Nadeshiko Japan's thread, maybe it was too early to expand the final stage from two groups to three and to add quarter-finals and semi-finals. Too many teams look quite out of their depth against the 4 big women's leagues in Asia (Japan, Australia, China and South Korea; yes, Australia is in Asia, blah, blah... ).
It's interesting that, in this AFC Champions' League you see a more than reasonable numer of foreign players (and scorers) from Africa and Eastern Europe. Probably these are the kind of players who can't find space in top-leagues in Europe and America, but it's anyway interesting that the Chawinga sisters and Barbara Banda started their international career in China: some of these players were actually overlooked and in the end they managed to jump to bigger stages.

Last observation: as I already wrote elsewhere, we at least have a Champions' League where a team has a dinosaur in its crest (Thai champions of College of Asian Scholars).

 

Jurassic Park III was released in the same year when the club was founded.

 

So far we have 5.5 qualified teams for the RO8:

- Incheon Red Angels (seeded for next round)
- Abu Dhabi Country Club
- Melbourne City (seeded for next round)
- Urawa Red Diamonds (seeded for next round)
- Ho Chi Minh City FC (seeded for next round)

The .5 is for Wuhan Jiangda and their +4 GD. It should be more than enough to qualify as one of the best 3rd place.

With at least 6 points, both Urawa and Ho Chi Minh City are assured to be seeded for the draw (whether they finish 1st or 2nd in the group) as Abu Dhabi failed to beat Sabah FA and group B 2nd place will have a maximum of 5 points.

 

Thanks for calculating this.

Are the pairings in the quarter finals somehow determined at this point, at least as reasonable projections related to the respective results of the few matches involved, or it's still quite early for that?

 

10.2. The eight (8) Participating Clubs that qualify from the Group Stage shall play in the quarter finals and the pairings of these Matches shall be determined by a draw as follows:
10.2.1. The first-placed Participating Clubs of each group and the best second-placed Participating Club among all groups shall be paired against one (1) of the remaining Participating Clubs and host each Match.
10.2.2. Participating Clubs from the same group in the Group Stage shall not be paired against each other.

 

Ok, so there are many possible pairings, since the 8 teams and their respective positions haven't even been completely determined yet.

Meanwhile, the team with the dinosaurs is the only one who hasn't scored a single goal so far in this final group-stage of the competition.

 

Sounds more like a Compsognathus than a T-Rex.

 

Has Miki Ito been credited the own goal in the first game? Or she should be at 4, actually.

 

In fact it was her who had taken the shot that was deflected by Maryam Ibrahim (Odisha's DF) and it probably was framed, although the deflection completely changed its path so it was difficult to assess if it was actually a shot on goal.

Anyway, if the official page now credits her 5 goals, they obviously decided that way.

 

Alright, so just spitballing here...

Group B should be an easy 9pts for Melbourne, both at this point and from the start. That means having a winner in the last group stage match between CAS and BK would mean a points spread of 9-4-2-1. In group C, Urawa should beat HCMC* so if there's a winner between Taichung and Odisha (likely the former) that would mean a 9-6-3-0 points spread.

Going on those, that would put HCMC(C2) as seeded among the 2nd place teams and Wuhan(A3) and Taichung(possible Odisha, C3) moving on ahead of Kaya-Iloilo. That is:
Seeded - A1, B1, C1, C2
Unseeded - A2, B2, A3, C3
...which would guarantee either Incheon-Taichung in the QFs or the pair of Incheon-(CAS/BK winner) and Melbourne-Taichung in the QFs.

*even a draw between Urawa and HCMC wouldn't change the seeding above, but draws in the other matches would change the seedings.

 

That's just the post I wanted to read! Go, spitballing!

 

Melbourne 4-0 KI
CAS 1-2 BK
Taichung 4-0 Odisha
Urawa 2-0 HCMC
No silly draws to complicate things! Although CAS-BK was quite close X-D