Official 2016 AFC Champions League Thread

There's no honor in this clownery.

 

Urawa only have themselves to blame. They have two two huge chances to win the game. First, they conceded the crucial goal in the last 3 minutes of injury time when they are leading in aggregate. Then Nishikawa failed to convert the last penalty kick to send Urawa to 1/8 final. I'm not sure why Nishikawa was given the responsibility to take the last penalty instead of someone like Tadanari Lee who scored two goals in additional time.

Sad that no J League teams in the last eight. Hope for a better performance next year.

 

Strange choice indeed, but there was probably a reason behind it. Taking PK's is not that much about how good you can kick, its also how strong you are mentally. Why "leaders" like Makino and KAshiwagi didn't step up is hard to understand. Worse than Nishikawa is letting a relatively young and inexperienced Komai take the spot-kick at a time only him, Makino, Kashiwagi and Koroki were remaining.

 

Why didn't Urawa win on away goal rule?

 

Because it doesn't work in extra time.

 

Ah, I only saw the match day scores and assumed the goals were in regulation time.

 

foreign players in the starting line-ups. shanghai 3-0 tokyo, seoul 4-0 urawa. the quality of the foreign players in the league has dramatically declined. i miss guys like emerson, washington, magno alves etc.

 

But, a strong lineup with domestic players is preferable.
I don't know, J League teams may want to be away from the phase when they were depend on foreign players.

 

True, but the number of foreigners are still pretty much the same as it was back when there were bigger names like the ones listed above due to the limit of 3+1 quota.

There are still some good foreigners like Leandro, Caio, Cristiano etc, but on a whole the level of the foreign players does seem to be a bit lower these days.

 

sorry, even leandro, caio and cristiano are nowhere near the quality of the brazilian players of the 2000s. with all due respect, they are "rejects" in brazil. j-league used to import many proven players in the brazilian serie a. washington and magno alves were the top scorers of the brazilian top division. alex minerio won the player of the season award in brazil before he moved to kashima.

 

Caio is good and young. Ederson from Reysol scored 21 goals in 2013 in Serie A.

 

In the k league there is Leonardo wich is also quite good.

 

You could say they are unknown in Brazil, but not rejects. Leandro and Caio arrived in Japan quite young and made their career in there.
Ederson was a top scorer in Brazil's 1st division and had no impact in Japan so far.