In the first leg of the quarterfinals, the Muñeco team lost 2-0 as a visitor and, on top of that, thinking about revenge, they lost Kanté by expulsion.
Al Ittihad, the team led by Marcelo Gallardo, did not make a foothold in its visit to Al Hilal – also from Saudi Arabia – in the first leg of the quarterfinals of the Asian Champions and returned from Riyadh with a defeat that complicated the series , which will be defined next week in Jeddah.
Once again without Karim Benzema, injured, the Muñeco team suffered a flurry of goals at the end of the first half and from there the game became difficult.
At 40 minutes, Serbian Aleksandar Mitrovic opened the scoring from a penalty and two minutes later, Salem Al-Dawsari (the author of Arabia’s 2-1 win in the Argentine National Team’s first match in Qatar 2022) extended the score for the by Jorge Jesus.
In the second half, to make matters worse, Al Ittihad was left with ten players and lost one of its great values thinking about revenge: N’Golo Kanté came in with an ugly tackle on Kalidou Koulibaly, his former Chelsea teammate, and deservedly saw the Red.
Even so, the final 2-0 leaves the series open for the rematch, which will be next Tuesday, but Al Ittihad will have to show an improved version after two defeats in five days against Al Hilal (they had beaten them on Friday by the Arab League).
Results of the first leg of the Asian Champions quarterfinals
- Al Ain 1-0 Al Nassr
- Al Hilal 2-0 Al Ittihad
- Jeonbuk 1-1 Ulsan Hyundai
- Shandong Taishan vs. Yokohama Marinos (played on Wednesday the 6th)
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