Thursday, December 10, 2009

Champions League Group is Deadly

The Asian Champions League groups are out and they look like this:

Group E
Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma (KOR), Melbourne Victory (AUS), Beijing Guoan (CHN), Kawasaki Frontale (JPN)

Group F
Kashima Antlers (JPN), Jeonbuk Motors (KOR), Persipura Jayapura (IDN), Changchun Yatai (CHN)

Group G
Henan Jianye (CHN), Gamba Osaka (JPN), Suwon Bluewings (KOR), Play-off East winners

Group H
Adelaide United (AUS), Shandong Luneng (CHN), Cup winners (JPN), Pohang Steelers (KOR)


Okay, I'm only focusing on the East groups and, to be honest, even among them I know very little about the non-Chinese sides, though most writeups talk about Group E as the "group of death". Melbourne's the Aussie league champs, Kawasaki is the J League runners up, and Seongnam is Korea's runners up.

Guoan opens up the campaign at home against Melbourne, so hopefully they'll get off on the right foot. No Chinese squad has an easy go of it, though hopefully at least one will be able to get out of the group stage, unlike this year. Stay tuned as we're 2 months away from the start of the season.

1 comment:

  1. I am looking for somebody who is interested to support Guoan for a German website about the Chinese soccer!
    I have a Chinese team here in Germany supported by the former Chinese player Yang Chen who is now in Nanjing and a few times for our project in Germany! You can see a picture with him and me on "www.snsports.de"!

    If you are interested please send me a mail to:
    difan72@gmail.com

    Best regards from Hamburg,
    Stephan

    ReplyDelete