On 30 September, Gamba Osaka played against Guangzhou Evergrande (China) at the 1st leg match of the AFC Champions League (ACL) 2015 Semi-Final. After they earned the opening goal of the match with the Guangzhou’s own goal, they allowed one goal in the rest of the first and the other in the second before losing the match to 2-1. The final match spot will be at stake at the 2nd leg of the semi-final to be kicked off at 7 p.m. on Wednesday 21 October at Expo '70 Commemorative Stadium.

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Coach and Players' Comments

KATANOSAKA Tomohiro, Assistant Coach (Gamba Osaka)
What I can say now after the match is that it’s just so disappointing. It’s a positive that we got an away goal. We expected scoring an away goal at Guangzhou Evergrande’s home would be very difficult, so getting that early in the first half was big. But it’s disappointing that we lost in the end. Drawing it at 1-1 or 2-2 would have been the best, but losing at 2-1 isn’t very bad at all. We now think that we want to play the 2nd leg at home in the way that we can take advantage of the away goal we got.

(Guangzhou Evergrande) was just as we expected. They were very good individually and a very physical team. I think our players felt that, too. But there were some aspects in the game where we weren’t outmatched at all. So we want to show more of those aspects in the second match. Of course they are very good on the road, and they beat Kashiwa Reysol 3-1. So I think they are very capable.

Our coach Hasegawa said we would need to go out to win this match, so even after we gave away the 2-1 lead, we kept thinking that we should never stop being aggressive. But if we get too offensive, they have very dangerous counter-attacks and many players who are capable of scoring. So I tried to coach with paying attention to managing our risks, keeping the good balance, trying not to concede the third goal and at the same time taking some risk to score more goals.

I think our coach would have done the same. We didn’t have so many scoring opportunities, but it was good that we scored a goal. We were able to simulate some of their defence, so we had practices to break that down. But some of our passes didn’t go through before taking it to shots to finish our attacks. We still have the 2nd leg, so we can’t talk too much about what we do. But I think we will have more decisive scoring chances, if we can play our style of quality offence.

MF ENDO Yasuhito (Gamba Osaka)
Of course a win is much better than a draw, but I think we still have a chance to win it overall. It was good that we got the away goal. But either way, we must win the next match, so we want to take over what we could do well today to the next match. I don’t know how they will play at our home, but I think we can create chances if we can manage our various passing tempos.

AFC CHAMPIONS LEAGUE 2015

Semi-Final
Wed. 21 October 2015 kick off at 19:00 (subject to change) Expo '70 Commemorative Stadium
Gamba Osaka (Japan)  vs  Guangzhou Evergrande (China) 

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