Asian club football is back and it is debatable as to how many people in South Korea are aware of this fact. Gwangju FC had never participated in the AFC Champions League Elite before, but in its first-ever match, they hosted Yokohama F. Marinos — the Japanese team that reached the final last May — and achieved an astonishing 7-3 victory.
It was a stunning result and an amazing performance from the southwesterners but there is still a long way to go. That is because this is a new format. The old Asian Champions League, the continent’s premier club tournament, is no more. The newly rebranded competition features significant changes.
The first major change is that the number of teams has been reduced from 40 teams from 20 different countries to 24 from 12. This is an attempt, by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), to try and raise standards. South Korea has three teams in the competition.
The main difference for fans is the format. Instead of the ten groups of four — when teams played the other three home and away — there are now two groups of 12, one based in East Asia and the other in West Asia. Obviously, there isn’t the time to play the other 11 teams in the group just once, never mind twice. So, Asia is following the new European model.
Gwangju and the others will play eight teams in the group. At the end, the top eight will progress to the Round of 16 while the bottom four will be eliminated. It means that there is a real chance to get to the knockout stages. If Gwangju can defeat Yokohama, the six-time champion of Japan, 7-3, then there is no reason why the team can’t progress.
Gwangju was promoted to the top tier in 2022 and finished third in the K League last season, marking an impressive achievement.
“Before the match, we spoke about our mentality going into this game. If someone had told me that we would emerge from being the K League 2 winners and finishing third in the K League 1 last season to playing in this competition this year, it would have been hard to believe,” said Gwangju coach Lee Jung-hyo. “However, we made it and that proves how strong mentally the players are,” he said.
Lee has done a great job so far and if he can bring Asian success then his status as Korea’s next top coach would be cemented.
Pohang Steelers will have to bounce back from a 4-1 mauling at Shanghai Shenhua but then the red and blacks have been Asian champion no less than three times. Ulsan HD has two titles to its name and kicked off against Japanese powerhouse Kawasaki Frontale but fell to a 1-0 defeat.
There is still a long way to go with seven more games. With just four out of 12 falling, there is time to recover from defeats but it remains to be seen how players and fans take to the new format. As often happens, it may well depend on results which, so far, have been mixed.