A pair of round 16 match-ups played their second-leg games in the AFC Champions League on the 13th and 14th May. Sanfrecce Hiroshima, Kawasaki Frontale and Cerezo Osaka have all qualified through their group stages and entered the last 16 looking for the quarterfinal berths. But all of them wound up being eliminated as they were edged by the total scores in their respective two contests at home and away. Now all the four clubs from Japan have all been ousted from the AFC Champions League, failing to produce a number one club in Asia.

Sanfrecce Hiroshima

1st leg　Sanfrecce Hiroshima　3-1　Western Sydney Wanderers
2nd leg　Western Sydney Wanderers　2-0　Sanfrecce Hiroshima
*Though they were tied with three goals apiece, Western Sydney Wanderers had more goals away and punched a ticket in the quarterfinal round.

MORIYASU Hajime, Head Coach
Hiroshima had more scoring opportunities in the first half. But we couldn't make them and that led to the result of the second half. While we played our 10th game of the series of 11 consecutive games and couldn't tune up our physical conditions well enough, Western Sydney had enough time to prepare themselves. The gaps made the difference in the second half.

After we gave up a goal, our balance wasn't so bad. Our risk management part was fine and we didn't get caught off-balance. Ideally, we wanted to relay passes by dodging the opponents like we did in the first half, but we lost our speed due to the fatigue and could not carry that out.

I believe that we have the ability to advance further. But we have been eliminated from the ACL here and it's disappointing. Our players were fighting with the mind-sets to want to go further, and it is all on me that could not lead the team to achieve that. Since last year, our team and each individual player have made improvements, and we came up all the way, overcoming all the difficulties that we had to face in the group league with our unyielding mentality. Our team made a lot of challenge to keep playing our brand of football.

Kawasaki Frontale

1st leg　Kawasaki Frontale　2-3　FC Seoul
2nd leg　FC Seoul　2-1　Kawasaki Frontale
*Though the two draw 4-4 combined in the two games, FC Seoul had more goals away and advanced to the quarterfinals.

KAZAMA Yahiro, Head Coach
I think that our players did pretty well. But we came up short by one goal, and it was  frustrating that we were not able to advance to the next round by winning. Yet I think that we could overwhelm F.C. Seoul at their site and that gave us some confidence, or we could consider this as our souvenir as we are returning home.

Cerezo Osaka

1st leg　Cerezo Osaka　1-5　Guangzhou Evergrande
2nd leg　Guangzhou Evergrande　0-1　Cerezo Osaka
*Guangzhou Evergrande F.C. advanced to the quarterfinals on the total goals (2-5).

RANKO Popovic Head Coach
If you look at the lineup of our opponents today, you know that they came up against us so seriously, trying to have some battle in this game. And I think that they had those players trying to score a lot of goals like they did in our first match.

Our Cerezo players put on brave fights on the pitch, and they weren't scared and frightened and put up everything they had today.
I think we played very smartly. I think that I talked that we weren't far behind as the result told in terms of our quality after the first game, and I think that our players proved that in today's match. The important thing is that we should not repeat things like mistakes we made and the lack of our fighting attitudes that we showed in the first game. It was a very important game for us to prove that we had learnt from that loss we took, and I think that we did prove that we came in this game having improved ourselves with what we learnt from the first game.

Since our fresher players put up good plays, I think that we proved that we can rotate the players and overcome how hard our schedule is going to get.