Ittihad Retain Their Asian Title (1 Viewer)

Rami

Rami

The Linuxologist
#1
Dec 24, 2004
8,068
#1


JEDDAH - While there have been some raised eyebrows around Asia over the format of a competition that allows the defending champions a bye into the quarter-finals, the fact that Al Ittihad are worthy winners of the AFC Champions League 2005 is not up for debate.

The team from Jeddah who beat Al Ain 5-3 on aggregate in the final on Saturday night, has scored 20 goals in six matches, and has played a style of attacking football that has conquered all before it, inclduing, we should add, a team from Korea, a country whose footballers are meant to be more tactically and technically gifted than those in west Asia. Busan I'Park 7-0 aggegrate defeat to Al Ittihad will take a long time to fade from the memories of all those who hold Korean football dear.

Before desposing of Ian Porterfield's side, Al Ittihad opened their campaign slowly (by later standards) with a 1-1 draw against a Shandong Luneng side boasting a 100 per cent record in the Group Stage. If the Saudis, whose domestic seasonm had yet to start at that stage, were lacking match sharpness, it wasn't long before the Jeddah juggernaut was in cruise control.
With the tie tentatively poised, Shandong traveled to Jeddah still harbouring hopes of becoming the first Chinese side to win continental honours since Liaoning won the 1989 Asian Club Championship.

Those hope were doused in emphatic fashion as Al Ittihad outlined their championship credentials with a master class of attacking football, running out 7-2 winners on the night and progressing with an impressive 8-3 aggregate win.

Al Ittihad’s reward for their impressive defeat of the 2004 China FA Cup winners was another trip out East but this time to Korea Republic where Busan, quarter-final conquerors of Al Sadd, awaited.

Korea has been happy hunting ground for Al Ittihad in the past, never more evident than when they overturned a 3-1 first leg defeat in Jeddah to defeat Seongnam 5-0 away to win the 2004 AFC Champions League.

But surely lightning couldn’t strike twice. Surely not against a Busan I’Park side whose record in the tournament had, thus far, had been nothing short of perfect: eight wins in eight games.

It was a statistic that not only suggested the Korean FA Cup holders were marginal favourites to advance to the final, it was also the longest winning run in the competition’s short history, eclipsing Pakhtakor’s six-match streak in the inaugural tournament.

But after a goalless first half, no less than five Al Ittihad players found the target as a side that had previously scored 30 times and conceded just one in the past eight games was made to look ordinary by the defending champions.

A perfunctory 2-0 win in the return fixture in Jeddah took Al Ittihad’s tally to 15 goals in four games as the Saudi giants booked their date with Al Ain, with a place at the FIFA Club World Championship at stake.

Al Ittihad's Road to AFC Champions League Glory

Final (Al Ittihad win 5-3 on aggregate)

05/11 - 2nd Leg
Al Ittihad 4 (Kallon 2, Noor 33, Job 56, Dokhi 68)
Al Ain 2 (Ahmed 55, Tejada 90 )

26/10 - 1st Leg
Al Ain 1 (Msarri 52)
Al Ittihad 1 (Kallon 86)

Semi-final (Al Ittihad win 7-0 on aggregate)

12/10 - 2nd Leg
Al Ittihad 2 (Mohamed Kallon 18, 58)
Busan I’Park 0

28/09 - 1st Leg
Busan I’Park 0
Al Ittihad 5 (Marzouk Al Otaibi 55, Mohamed Kallon 62, Tcheco 65, Saud Al Khariri 86, Hamzah Idris 89)

Quarter-final (Al Ittihad won 8-3 on aggregate)

21/09 - 2nd Leg
Al Ittihad 7 (Osama Al Harbi 19, Tcheco 34, Ibrahim Sowed 56, Mohamed Kallon 66, Manaf Abushgeer 77,
89, Redha Tukar 81 pen)
Shandong 2 (Li Xiaopeng 16, Cui Peng 61)

14/09 1st Leg
Shandong 1 (Li Xiaopeng 54)
Al Ittihad 1 (Mohammed Noor 48)

Facts at a Glance

Played: 6
Won: 4
Drawn: 2
Lost: 0
For: 20
Against: 6

Top scorer: Mohamed Kallon (6)
 

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Rami

Rami

The Linuxologist
Thread Starter #2
Dec 24, 2004
8,068
  • Thread Starter
    • Thread Starter #2


    JEDDAH - Al Ittihad, of Saudi Arabia, confirmed their status as Asia’s top club when they won the AFC Champions League for a second consecutive time on Saturday thanks to a 4-2 win over Al Ain, of the United Arab Emirates, to wrap up a 5-3 aggregate win over the side which won the competition in 2003.

    A goal after just two minutes from Mohamed Kallon and a Mohammed Noor header on 33 minutes gave Anghel Iordanescu’s side a 2-0 lead at the break. Although Al Ain, winners of this competition in 2003, pulled one back courtesy of a Shebab Ahmed penalty 10 minutes after the re-start, the side from Jeddah reasserted their supremacy a minute later through Joseph Desire Job, later sent off. Ahmed Dokhi completed the rout with 22 minutes left on the clock before Luis Tejada pulled one back for the visitors in added time.

    The win means a $500,000 pay day for the Jeddah outfit for winning the competition and, more importantly, a place at the FIFA Club World Championship in Japan December, where they will open their campaign against the club champions of Africa on December 13 in Tokyo.

    The win was no more than the Saudis deserved, and caps a memorable year for the club who, in July, added the Arab Champions League trophy to their impressive list of domestic and continental honours.

    Al Ittihad showed just one change from the side which started the first leg 10 days ago with Noor, who only featured in the second half in the 1-1 draw in the UAE, taking his place in the team in place of the injured Ibrahim Sowed. It was a memorable return for the midfielder, who scored a goal and was named man of the match.

    Milan Macala, meanwhile, shuffled his pack, with Panama’s Luis Tejada and Helal Saeed relegated to the bench, with Humaid Fakher and Shebab Ahmed taking their place in an adventurous 3-4-3 formation.

    With the game barely two minutes old, Al Ittihad gave their fans in the packed Prince Abdullah Al Faisal Stadium reason to raise the roof when Kallon, formerly of Inter Milan and Monaco, placed a free-kick from 20 yards over the Al Ain wall and past Abdulla Mutaz into the top left-hand corner of the net to give the hosts the perfect start. Mutaz, who has earned rave reviews for his displays between the posts for Al Ain, was slow to react and should have done more than simply watch the ball said into his net.

    Fired up by the goal, and with 25,000 fans roaring them on, the home side dominated the next 15 minutes of play with Noor and Manaf Abushgeer both coming close to adding to the team’s lead.

    It was fully 20 minutes before the Al Ain central midfield of Alberto Blanco and Subait Khater begun to make their presence felt on proceedings but they were stretched to the limits by the way Ittihad moved the wide out to the flanks at the earliest opportunities.

    On one such occasion, on 26 minutes, a flowing move saw the ball move in a matter of seconds from Tcecho, Al Ittihad’s Brazilian midfielder, on the left all the way to the right where Noor was inches away from doubling the home side’s lead but his shot from eight yards squirted narrowly wide.

    A minute later, Nwoha Oneykachi, Al Ain’s burly Nigerian striker, was only inches away from getting his head on the end of Abdulla Ali’s searching cross from the left. It was the visitors’ first real opening of the half.

    Al Ain’s defence was at fault for Al Ittihad’s second, which came on 33 minutes. Tcheco, one of five players in the Al Ittihad starting 11 who played in last year's AFC Champions League final, floated a free-kick into the danger area from the left and an unchallenged Noor, getting the better of Ahmed, planted a header wide of Mutaz’s right hand into the net to send the Al Ittihad faithful into raptures.

    Job, on loan from English Premier League side Middlesbrough, could have made it three in the dying minutes of the half when the ball fell to him in a goal-mouth scramble but Mutaz was quick to avert the danger with a smothering save.

    Al Ain, who had booked their place in the final with wins in the quarter-final and semi-final over Pas, of Iran, and China’s Shenzhen Jianlibao respectively, got the start to the second half they needed when skipper Fahad Ali was tripped, unintentionally, by Tcecho as the home side failed to clear Subait Khater’s free-kick. Singaporean referee Shamsul Maidan pointed to the spot and Shebab stepped up and sent Mabrouk Zaid the wrong way to give Macala’s side hope with 35 minutes left to play.

    Amazingly, though, their joy lasted just 60 seconds as Blanco and Ali Msarri both failed to make contact with Tcheco’s free-kick from the right and Job was on hand at the near post to head his first goal for the Saudis. It was a crushing blow for Macala’s men.

    Seven minutes later, Job was only denied a second headed goal by the post after another cross from the right which the Al Ain defence failed to deal with.

    On 68 minutes later, any hopes the visitors had of finding a way back into the game was snuffed out when Noor, rampaging through the heart of the Al Ain midfield, fed Ahmed Dokhi, overlapping down the right. The full-back pulled the trigger and fired the ball across Mutaz with such venom and power that, although the keeper did get a hand to the ball, he could not prevent it rolling into the far corner of the net.

    Macala threw on Tejada, Rami Yaslam and Saeed in the closing 20 minutes but not even the dismissal of Job, for pushing Fahad Ali in the face, could derail the all-conquering Saudis.

    Although Iordanescu’s men only had to play six games in their campaign after receiving a bye as defending champions into the last eight, few would quibble with their claims to being worth winners of the title, especially as those six games have seen the Tigers score an impressive 20 goals, including a 7-0 aggregate win over Busan I’Park in the semi-finals. Up to that point, the Koreans had been regarded as potential champions but they, like Al Ain, had no answer to the power, pace and athleticism shown by the side from Saudi Arabia.

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    WOOOHOOOO....ONE ONE ONE, AND ITTI IS NUMBER ONE!!!!
     
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