亚冠1/4决赛首回合 广州恒大2:0击败莱赫维亚

The lone Chinese club left in the competition, the Chinese Super League leading Guangzhou Evergrande, began their tie with Qatar’s Lekhwiya at home.

Evergrande exited this competition at this stage last campaign so they were determined to put down a solid performance in leg one and take control of the tie in front of their fans in Guangzhou.

Guangzhou, coached by Italy’s World Cup winning coach Marcello Lippi, have been in impressive form in the domestic league, unbeaten through 21 matches with 18 wins along the way. Lekhwiya, who are making their quarter-final debut certainly the underdogs.

Just before the half hour mark, Evergrande came close. A cross found Muriqui inside the area with space. But the Brazilian striker blasted the ball over the crossbar from close range missing a great opportunity to take lead.

Guangzhou had to wait till the 72nd minute of the match to make a breakthrough. Dario Conca was deemed to have been fouled inside the area setting him up from the spot and the Argentine made no mistake. Guangzhou were up 1-0.

Three minutes later, the home side doubled their lead. Muriqui cut in from the left and passed to Elkeson who played a little with Conca before the in-form Brazilian finished in style. The Chinese club held on to their two-goal lead and will take that advantage to Doha for the second leg on September 18.

"I am happy to have so many fans here today. For us, the match does not last for 90 minutes, but 180 minutes. I hope we can learn something from today’s match. Our opponents’ defence put some pressures on us. We will try our best to win the second leg of the match." Elkeson, Guangzhou Evergrande Midfielder said.

"We created a lot opportunities during the match. As long as we grabbed anyone of them, we could score. I think we should have taken the lead earlier than we did. Conca’s spot kick broke the deadlock. I want to say that in not every game we can get job down in the first ten minutes. The teams participating in the quarterfinals of the AFC champions league, are the strongest eight teams in Asia. We created some chances and missed some chances in the match. But we scored two goals. I am satisfied with our players’ performance. " Marcello Lippi, Guangzhou Evergrande Head Coach said.

In other matches. Japan’s Kashiwa Reysol and Saudi side Al Shabab wrapped up leg one of their tie and ended up in a 1-1 draw. Iran’s Esteghlal got off to a solid start in their first appearance in the quarterfinals of the competition as Khosro Heydari’s early strike sealed a 1-0 win over Buriram United of Thailand. Al Ahli of Saudi Arabia, last season’s runners-up, left it late to salvage a 1-1 draw with South Korea’s FC Seoul.