Asian Champions League 2010

Adelaide Make it Two
by Chris Dunkerley

Group H - Week 2 - 1st Leg
6:35pm, Wednesday 10 March, 2010
at Shandong Sports Centre, Jinan, China


Shandong Luneng Taishan FC 0
lost to
Adelaide United FC 2
(Sergio van Dijk 28', Matthew Leckie 69')



Adelaide United made the most of the long trip to the cold northern Chinese province of Shandong by defeating sister club Shandong Luneng 2-0, with good goals, a first half header by Sergio van Dijk, and a second half header by Matthew Leckie from a corner; taking full points in the process from the first two games.

It was a very disciplined performance from the Reds with their defensive qualities tested often throughout the game, ceding possession to the chinese team, and their play on the break method looking ineffective for the first 28 minutes - then it wasn't.

Robbie Cornthwaite robbed the ball well into the Reds half, then slotted it forward to Marcos Flores, who steered it forward onto a well timed run by Lucas Pantelis. Pantelis crossed from right over the defence and nearby the far post where Sergio van Dijk was free to head home off the inside of the left post. 0-1

Shandong continued to press, and indeed showed renewed aggression after the break that at times had the Reds midfielders chasing shadows, but generally any shots were wayward. Shandong's Lebanese international Roda Antar had a good chance with a free header in 55th minute but it went wide. Still Wang Yongpo and Lu Zheng created lots of problems for Adelaide early in the second half.

In the 69th minute a flat, perfectly flighted corner by Scott Jamieson from the right sent the ball sailing over the congested box for Matthew Leckie, who ran into the penalty area from the left completely unmarked and smashed his diving header in off the underside of the cross-bar. The ball clearly over the line before going back into the field of play, and there was no doubting the ball had crossed the goal line. 0-2

“It was a great win. I think it was really important that we backed up from our good win against Pohang,” 'Assistant' Coach Aurelio Vidmar said after the victory. “We started the game off very well, we really didn’t allow them to get any rhythm in the game, especially in that first half and then we scored a great goal.”

Goalkeeper Eugene Galekovic had laid the foundation with a great save in the 9th minute, which, had it gone in, would have impacted on Adelaide's whole game plan. "He (Galekovic) is a fantastic keeper, we know that and at the right times he made two fantastic saves, but he wasn’t the only one that was fantastic tonight,” Vidmar said."“I thought our two centre halves Robbie Cornthwaite and Iain Fyfe were fantastic, Sergio up front and our midfielders were absolutely brilliant, they stay disciplined, we executed our corner extremely well and we knew that was probably an area that we could have got a little bit of joy out of and we certainly did, it was a fantastic goal from Leckie.”

Vidmar added, "The group’s mentality has been fantastic…the confidence amongst the players and within the group is very good at this point of time and winning does that.” “The performance tonight, you could see that they were stubborn, there was no way they were going to concede the goal, they were desperate in defence and everything worked very well for us.”

“In such a close game, the side that scored the first goal would enjoy an overwhelming advantage,” said Shandong's coach Branko Ivankovic. “Our players had very good scoring chances. Unfortunately, we missed all of them and their first goal proved destructive to our defence. We had even better scoring chances in the second-half but couldn’t convert any of them.”

The Reds' next AFC Champions League match at home against Japan’s Sanfrecce Hiroshima on March 24 (Kick-Off 7.30pm)

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