First of all, let me congratulate Ittihad team on a job well done in winning the Asian Champions League in Korea .

While physical skills do matter, intangibles have a lot to do in victory and defeat. I am strongly convinced mind games ultimately decided the outcome of the home-and-away match. To put in my 10 cents worth, I felt there was a big difference in the way Ittihad played in Jeddah and the way Ittihad played in Korea. The same held true for the Korea’s Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma.

Both sides displayed overconfidence when playing in front of their home fans and this I believe was key to Ittihad’s huge 5-0 win in the return leg in Korea as the hosts underestimated the visitors and paid the price in front of the more than 30,000 disappointed fans at Seongnam Sports Complex.

Ittihad could have finished the game early in Jeddah had they played more seriously. Ittihad deserved to lose in Jeddah because players were thinking ‘win’ even before the match started since they have the home crowd. Ittihad players were overconfident and thought that the game will be smooth sailing. They were all wrong. We all saw how they missed one chance after another. They obviously lacked team spirit. When the Koreans scored the early goal, Ittihad were clueless to what hit them.

Ittihad was disorganized, lost and to make matters worse Croatian coach Ivic made silly decisions. No one ever thought for once that Osama Al-Muwalad, a defender, would play as a striker. Ivic was confused and lost because he could not come to grips on how to tap the full potential of the star-studded squad where nine are on the Saudi national team. Instead, he replaced midfielders Khamees Al-Zahrani and the Brazilian player Chico with Al-Hassan Al-Yami, who was out of shape after not seeing action for some time, and Manaf Abu Shgeer, who just returned from injury. Logically, Ibraheem Suwaeed and Khaled Gahwaji should have been the replacements in midfield.

Ittihad club President Mansour Al-Balawi made the right decision by firing the coach who was taking his team down the tubes. Many objected and said that the timing was not right because the crucial game was one week away. Ittihad realized it was make or break in Korea. Many fans were not optimistic about Ittihad winning in Korea, considering the cold weather, the low morale and, well, the unfriendly crowd.

In Korea, we all saw a different Ittihad, the Ittihad we knew. The overconfident virus that hit Ittihad players seemed to have transferred to the Koreans who were not as good as when they played in Jeddah. Their players were not taking Ittihad seriously because these same bunch had taken a beating from them in Jeddah. To their surprise, the Ittihad they played in Jeddah were a far cry from what they faced at home. To have won by a big margin against a Korean side in Korea ranks as one of the greatest achievements by a Saudi team in Asian soccer history. The lesson to be learned in the game in Korea is that overconfidence does not pay and not to underestimate any opponent.