JEDDAH, 22 November 2004 — Football fans are eagerly waiting for a clash of their local heroes with a visiting Korean team, which is set at Al-Ittihad Club ground here on Wednesday.
The match will be the final of the AFC Champions League being played between Al-Ittihad Club and Korea’s Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma.
It is being played over two legs, the Jeddah clash being the first leg.
The second leg will be played in Korea on Dec. 1. The winners will receive $500,000. The Seongnam team has been holding coaching sessions here since its arrival on Saturday. The sessions are held daily evening for a couple of hours.
Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma are the Korean League champions, who booked their place in the final of the AFC Champions League after beating their counterparts from Uzbekistan in Tashkent in the second leg of the semifinal recently.
Al-Ittihad stands between the Koreans and their first piece of continental silverware since the Asian Super Cup they won in 1996. The Saudi team drew 2-2 with Korea’s Chonbuk Motors to advance 4-3 on aggregate.
Asian Football Federation has appointed a group of referees to supervise the upcoming match. Moradi Masoud, an Iranian, will be the match referee.
Assisting him as linesmen will be Kharzafi Ali and Kharzafi Rasool.
The coach of the Korean team paid tribute to Al-Ittihad team and said it held the local players in high esteem. “Al-Ittihad is a strong team and they have a number of star players. They will have the advantage of their home ground, but we’ll do our best to achieve best results,” the coach said.
The Korean coaching camp includes a complete food and nourishment program for sportsmen. The visiting players have also been watching their games on video, especially those played against local and Asian matches. “The video screening is a learning process for us. We study the game well enough to learn from our mistakes,” a Korean player said.
Meanwhile, Al-Ittihad players had a warm-up game against Shabab on Friday.
