Originally Posted by giggsrox

A measly attendance of just over 20K?

What happened to all the stadiums in Korea and Japan, plus the legendary football-mad Middle East?

(Indonesia is conveniently exempted. Persipura's home ground is hard to reach, yes?)

understandable, on your part. Ceteris Paribus, you'd have expected full house in Korea, Japan and maybe the Middle East...

but granted, many would have been eager to see how Henan would have figured in their debut ACL season. Many would have been tired of how bad Chinese football had become and looked to Henan for fresh air (rather than Beijing Guo'an and Shandong Luneng, whose premature capitulations in previous group stages did them no favours to the ordinary fan and the critic alike)

It's a wednesday after all, so it's understandable in Japan and Korea that their season ticket holders who regularly fill up their stadiums would sometimes have to work OT..they are human and have their own jobs after all..

Originally Posted by hairi33

yeap... the game was supposedly sold out. the other 10k decided to go shopping instead...

In Chinese football, the home team usually have a large number of tickets that they give away as "goodwill" to their corporate clients, government agencies, etc. In this case, I would suppose that Jianye gave them to real estate companies, and land bureau officials.

Less than 5000 watched the Seongnam vs Kawasaki game? Almost like our highest S League attendance.

Other reasons for the low turnout are that many middle eastern countries have very small population, and ladies are not allowed to watch football games. Also, overallocation to the visiting teams. I bought my ticket to the Guo'an game through the Aust Chamber of Commerce on matchday itself and there were less than 100 of us at the away stands. Was told by AustCham that the decision to sell them was made only on mon because Victory was finding it hard to sell them in Melbourne.

It's a joke that AFC had set the minimum average attendance for MA's national league games at 5000, where ACL itself can't even hit that much

Originally Posted by roebuck89

YouTube - ACL Matchday 1 Henan Construction vs SAFFC

match highlights in youtube. same clip though... but at least i dont get annoyed with too many chinese words. no offense, but it does get to me when i see something i dont understand.

WOW Shahril's double save 36 seconds into the clip was EPIC!

Just by looking at the match highlights.. we could see how strong Henan Jianye is ..They totally controlled the match .The china news said ' Even tough Safc have more experience than Henan ... Henan took control of the match'. Safc are lucky to escape with a point due to poor finishing and good saves by the Goalkeeper.. but they would not be so lucky next time.. Safc must use proper tatics to defeat Suwon ... Draw would be a stunner A win will shock the whole AFC ppl and clubs.. I think

Sry guys computer lag ... anyone knows how to delete extra post which are the same?