Eastern’s Asian Champions League campaign finally began in earnest with a spirited 1-1 draw with J League giants Kawasaki Frontale. In their previous outing against Guangzhou Evergrande, everything that could have gone wrong, did for Eastern, so a reversal of fortunes was due.
Eastern’s Bleda slotted home a penalty in the 14th minute after he was pulled down and denied a goal scoring opportunity by Tatsuki Nara who was subsequently red carded. The game ended in slight chaos with Kawasaki’s Rhayner getting sent off for his second yellow card yet the referee blew up for full time when a free kick, in theory, should have been taken.
Chan Yuen-ting reflected on the game in the post-game press conference and discussed her role as a pioneer coach: “I am not really concerned about how I am the first lady to coach in the Asian Champions League and I am more focused on the team performance as it was our (Eastern’s and Hong Kong) first time to play in the ACL. I am happy with the one point and it will give us confidence to have a better performance in the future”.
The Eastern goalkeeper, Yapp Hung-fai, also commented on his ‘man of the match’ performance but said: “It would have been better if Eastern got all three points than myself getting the MVP award.”
Photos from the night by Dennis Lo, Christopher KL Lau, Ken Wu, Ryan Kam.
