AFC Champions catching on - just not with me
Updated: 2013-05-05 07:13
By Tym Glaser(China Daily)
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I was, oddly enough, in my local bar the other week having a quiet chat with two of my mates, Jack and Daniel, when a funny thing happened.
Well, it wasn't funny ha-ha, just funny as in odd, as a school of students wandered in wearing the green jerseys of Beijing Guo'an. In the capital, that's hardly a rare sight, but these dudes and dudettes were foreign students from nearby UIBE, ready to conjure up some Dutch courage before Guo'an's final AFC Champions League group stage match against Sanfrecce Hiroshima.
What made it all that more strange as they filed out before game-time was the fact that the encounter was being played in Japan.
Obviously, there was an ultra-cool kegger going on somewhere (to which I was not invited) and Guo'an was to be the focus of attention.
I found that pretty neat on a couple of levels.
First, the fact that these young study-heads had adopted the Beijing soccer team in green as their own. Second, that they were into the largest continent's (plus Australia) premier club league.
I thoroughly enjoy my rare trips down to Workers' Stadium to watch Guo'an in the Chinese Super League and have even enhanced my Mandarin vocabulary; although I don't know why visiting fans are called "shabby" when they seem quite well dressed to me!
However, even with a large Chinese presence and a token Australian one, I have never been able to work up much of a lather over the AFC CL.
Maybe it's because the league is almost totally eclipsed by the European version which features, basically, all the greatest players in the world and, almost perennially, iconic teams like Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Barcelona, Real Madrid, AC Milan, Juventus, Bayern Munich and Newcastle (OK, only joking on that last one there).
Maybe it's 'cause, it lacks star power to drive it along or that half the teams are called Al; like Al Gharafa, Al Shabab, Al Shabab Al Arabi, Al Pacino, Al Ahli, Al Jolson, Al Hilal.
Whatever, it does seem to be gaining some serious traction now in China thanks to the efforts of teams like Guo'an and Guangzhou Evergrande, who have both advanced to this season's round-of-16 (and the latter has a serious shot at bringing the crown to China for the first time).
I, for one, will buy an XXL Guo'an jersey and tune in for the coming knockout stages. That'll be fun particularly if I get invited to a kegger.
Tym Glaser is a senior sports copy editor who can be contacted at Laker's or [email protected]
(China Daily 05/05/2013 page8)