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The Western Sydney Wanderers come away from the opening leg of their Asian Champions League semi-final against FC Seoul with a scoreless draw – a result they would have wanted.
Heading into the second leg in Sydney, the Wanderers are now well placed to secure a maiden berth in the ACL final.
FINAL SCORE:
Western Sydney Wanderers 0
FC Seoul 0
The Western Sydney Wanderers will try to continue their fairy tale in the Asian Champions League with a win against FC Seoul in the semi-finals tonight. Join The Roar for live scores from 8:30pm (AEST).
Tonight is all about conservation mode for the Wanderers. Playing away from home, in a two leg match, the Wanderers can’t win the contest in the 90 minutes tonight.
They can lose the contest though with a big loss to FC Seoul at the World Cup stadium.
Making the semi-final a contest heading into the second leg in Sydney, is the aim of the Wanderers in the first leg.
It promises to be a tough match with FC Seoul only losing once in the Champions League at home this year. That was against Kawasaki Frontale who defeated the Korean team 2-1 in the second leg of their Round of 16 match.
In their quarter final match, against the Pohang Steelers, they didn’t score or concede, as they won on penalties.
The best guide to this match comes from the group stage when FC Seoul played the Central Coast Mariners. They won 2-0 against the Mariners as they progressed in the group on top.
The Wanderers would have watched that match and learnt as much as they could about their opponent heading into tonight. One area they are strong at is in defence.
In the current season of the K-League they have only conceded 19 goals in 26 matches. They are also on a 210 minute run without conceding a goal in the Champions League.
On the same token though, they can certainly attack, when they need to.
They have scored 30 goals in the K-League this season and also put three past Kawasaki Frontale in one of their legs against them.
Leading the attack is Sergio Escudero who scored a couple of goals in the Asian Champions League this year already. If the Wanderers give him space tonight then he can cause problems to the team.
Tonight will all be about minimising the chances of FC Seoul. It will also be about playing on the counter, and snaring any chances that they can get.
They did this well against Guangzhou Evergrande when they scored against the run of play in their away leg against the Chinese champions.
The Wanderers will need to do the same tonight.
They will have to do it without Tomi Juric and Brenton Santalab who are both out of the match after gaining a yellow card against Guangzhou.
Labinot Haliti looks to be the player to replace Juric for this important clash.
Tonight is a huge night for the Wanderers and Australian football.
A good result could give Australia just its second ever representative in an Asian Champions League final.
I think they can get something out of tonight and make it everything to play for in Sydney.
I’m predicting a 1-1 draw.
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