Asian Champions League Semi-final Busan v Al-Ittihad

John Duerden reports from Busan

At the beginning of the Korean hit gangster movie ‘Friend', four boys chase a truck spraying anti-mosquito toxins around the mean streets of Busan, a tough city and the third biggest port in the world.

Supposedly symbolizing the fruitless pursuit of things we can never have, the city's football club will know exactly how those boys felt after the events of the past week.

Busan I'Park looked to be a team on a roll in the AFC Champions League. Winning the 2004 Korean FA Cup on Christmas Day presented the club with entry into the continental competition and after breezing through the group stage, the trophy and the added bonus of a place in December's World Club Championship was in sight.

The opposition in the first stage, coming from Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam, wasn't the most difficult but six wins, 25 goals scored and none conceded is an impressive record in anyone's book and earned the south coast outfit a quarter-final tie with Al-Sadd.

The ten-time Qatari champions were also defeated comfortably, 5-1 over the two legs, earning Busan a semi-final date with defending champions Al-Ittihad.

The Saudi Arabians are well known in South Korea after defeating two K-League teams on their way to the 2004 title.

First Chonbuk Hyundai Motors were knocked out of the semi-final by a last minute goal but six-time Korean champions Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma waited in the final to avenge their fallen countrymen.

That's what they did in the first leg in Jeddah, coming away with a 3-1 victory. The return game, was not unreasonably, supposed to be a formality. On a famous, or infamous, depending where you are from, night, Al-Ittihad shocked their hosts with a 5-0 scoreline.

Few would have predicted that scoreline would be repeated in the first leg of the semi-final in Busan's Gudeok Stadium, especially when the teams went into the dressing rooms of the ageing, municipally-owned arena at half-time with the score goalless.

It had been a tight affair with I'Park and the big-spending Saudis unable to find a way past the opposing defence. Mohamed Kallon came the closest for the visitors but his shot hit the side netting after the Sierra Leone international rounded Kim Yong-dae in the Busan goal.

The former Inter Milan striker had joined the club from AS Monaco in a year-long loan deal worth a reported $6 million.

Fellow African, Joseph-Desire Job made the trip from the somewhat less exotic location of Middlesbrough after the Cameroonian hotshot had found it difficult to hold down a place in the Premier League club's line-up.

With a healthy number of Saudi internationals in their line-up as well as the mercurial Brazilian Tcheco, the club had been unsurprisingly installed as the favourites for the competition.

They also want to be strongly-fancied for the World Club Championships and most of this year has been spent gearing up for that tournament.

Tcheco was the one who pulled the second–half strings. He freed Kallon on the right and the 26-year-old crossed for Marzouk Al Otaibi to head home the first after 55 minutes. Seven minutes later, he was fouled outside the box for Kallon to crash home a free-kick via the upright.

At this point Busan's dreams of continental glory looked to be slipping away but the team, which won the first stage of the K-League in July, didn't take the deep breath that was necessary and overextended themselves trying to get back in the game.

Tcheco scored the third just after the hour and created the fourth for Saud Khariri with four minutes later and there was still time for the ecstatic Middle-Easterners to grab a fifth through substitute Hamzah Idris.

After changing venues from the cavernous World Cup Stadium to the more homely and accessible Gudeok Stadium, the club had been rewarded with a large crowd, it's biggest of the season, and those fans had been rewarded by a perfect example of tight defending, creative midfield play and incisive and quick attacking. Unfortunately, it was the visitors who provided such a lesson.

Though there are ninety minutes left in the tie, it will be a deflated Busan I'Park that makes the long trip to Jeddah for the return game on October 12 as boss Ian Porterfield was well aware.

"It's a massive task," said the former Chelsea coach. "We have to go there and perform better than we did in the second half. We have to get back to our good habits and do the things that we are good at. If we had done that tonight then we may have had a different result.

Porterfield who had a short spell in charge of Al-Ittihad a decade ago was dignified in defeat and paid tribute to his conquerors. "Al Ittihad are the Manchester United of the Arab world," he said and added, "They're strong and quick and they have grown in stature and quality over the years and are now an outstanding team as they have proved in the past and again tonight."

The Scot's counterpart Anghel Iordanescu was similarly generous, though that is less of a compliment after witnessing his team record a great victory.
"It was a good game, both teams played well in the first half," he said.
"When we came to Korea Republic we didn't expect to get this kind of result, we just came here for a positive result. I want to say good luck to Busan because the Korean team played well but this is football, this is life. After 45 minutes, nobody would have believed the score would be 5-0. "The first half was balanced, the second was balanced in our favour."

It will take a miracle for Busan to rebalance the tie in the second leg on October 12.

John Duerden

"The Onside In-Site" Copyright © From 2000. All rights reserved. Soccerphile Ltd.