JEDDAH: Al-Hilal is at home to Umm Salal of Qatar today ahead of the bulk of the west zone round of 16 matches in the AFC Champions League.
The match will be played at King Fahd International Stadium in Riyadh. Tomorrow, Al-Ittihad and Al-Shabab face off in a rematch of their King’ Cup final which Shabab won 4-0 on May 15.
The other matches pit Al-Ittifaq, the fourth Saudi side in the knockout stage of Asia’s top club competition, against PFC Pakhtakor Tashkent of Uzbekistan, and Iran’s Piroozi against FC Bunyodkor of Uzbekistan. The east zone matches will take place on June 24.
Hilal qualified first of Group A with 14 points, beating Pakhtakor Tashkent 2-0 in the last match of the group. Pakhtakor came second in the group with 13 points. Umm Salal qualified second of Group C with eight points but if the 7-0 drubbing by Jeddah-based Ittihad in its final match is any indication about the state of its game the host side should have no trouble advancing to the quarterfinal.
Hilal’s interim coach, Abdul Latif Al-Husseini, met with the players and stressed the importance of the match in which a defeat means goodbye to the tournament.
Meantime, the Asian Football Confederation said yesterday its flagship club competition, the AFC Champions League, attracted more than one million spectators during the group stages — a new record.
A total of 1,037,702 fans packed stadiums across Asia to watch 94 group phase encounters as 32 teams slugged it out to make the round of 16.
This year’s milestone overhauled the numbers achieved in the five previous editions of the competition.
“The numbers show that Asian teams are popular in the continent and their game has attained the professionalism required in this modern era,” said AFC President Mohamed bin Hammam.
“I hope that the knockout stages of the competition will throw up interesting battles and the spectators will keep going to the stadiums to cheer their favorite teams.”
The tournament has been expanded this year from 28 to 32 teams with stricter participation criteria imposed in an effort to raise the level of play.
At stake is $20 million dollars in prizemoney, dwarfing the four million available for the 2008 event as the AFC looks to push the competition to another level. — With input from agencies
