The days when K-League teams sat on the throne of the AFC Champions League seem to have come and gone. Korea, which produced the top tier teams in the past three years, will be lucky to even have a team in the semifinals as all but Ulsan Hyundai have been ousted.
Ulsan is the only remaining club out of the four K-League teams sent to the AFC. The club goes into the quarterfinals after beating Kashiwa Reysol 3-2.
The team is a relative newcomer to the Champions League and will now have to represent Korea alone on Sept. 9 when it plays a randomly matched club.
On Tuesday, former 2010 champion Seongnam Ilhwa failed to secure a place in the final eight despite having home advantage against Uzbekistan’s Bunyodkor. Seongnam is regarded as one of Korea’s most successful football clubs with seven K-League titles, two FA Cup titles and two AFC titles. And true to its reputation, Seongnam largely set the tempo but was unable to score vs. Bunyodkor. This will be the second Korean team that Bunyodkor has knocked out of the Champions League this year, after defeating the Pohang Steelers 1-0 in the final group-stage match.
The 2011 AFC runner-up and K-League champion Jeonbuk walked into the final group match on top but was quickly pushed out by Japanese and Chinese clubs.
By Robert Lee (
robert@heraldcorp.com)
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