Thu, 28 Oct, 2021
Al Ain: Colombian Danilo Asprilla and Ismail Ahmed were on target as inaugural ACL winners Al Ain booked their place in the Round of 16 of the 2016 AFC Champions League thanks to a 2-0 win over Uzbekistan’s Nasaf on Tuesday.
Asprilla struck six minutes before the end of the first half and Ahmed added a second on the stroke of full time for Al Ain, who advance to the next phase as runners-up in Group D behind El Jaish thanks to an inferior head-to-head record against the Qatari side.
The win marked a fourth game without defeat for Al Ain, who started the campaign with back-to-back losses against El Jaish before winning three of the next four games to advance to the knockout phase.
“I want to congratulate the players for this victory and for qualifying to the next round,” said Al Ain coach Zlatko Dalic. “The players showed great determination to get the three points and they followed the plan we put in place before the match.
“We played with an offensive performance in the first half and controlled proceedings. We were the better side as we took the lead and created several scoring chances and although we missed a lot we eventually scored the second goal in the last minute.”
Needing all three points to be sure of remaining in the competition, Al Ain showed their intent to dominate from the first whistle, with Douglas finding the side netting with his attempt inside the opening minute.
The home side pushed and probed, with Omar Abdulrahman unable to put enough curl on his 25th minute attempt to steer the ball inside Eldorbek Suyunov’s right post while soon after he tried his luck from long range, only for the Nasaf goalkeeper to comfortably collect.
With six minutes remaining in the half, however, Al Ain took a deserved lead. Abdulrahman, as ever, was at the heart of the move, sliding the ball into the path of Asprilla, who outpaced the Nasaf defence before lashing a low, right-foot shot under Suyunov and into the far corner.
Still Al Ain continued to push, with Fellipe Bastos twice unnerving the Nasaf defence with fearsome long-range attempts that ultimately proved to be harmless.
Douglas and Mohammad Abdulrahman were askew with their second-half attempts as Al Ain continued applying pressure before Bobir Abdixolikov almost hit the home side with a sucker-punch in the 76th minute, only for his shot to come back off the crossbar and bounce to safety.
That was as close as Nasaf would come to scoring in a game the Uzbeks also needed to win to keep their campaign alive, and Ahmed’s decisive header in the 90th minute secured the win for Al Ain as he met emphatically Omar Abdulrahman’s corner to claim all three points.
“Al Ain are one of the best sides in the continent and they deserved to win tonight,” said Nasaf coach Ruziqul Berdiev. “We didn’t perform well in the first half as we played with a defensive plan and this affected us.
“We wanted to avoid conceding goals in the first half and we relied on counter attacks. However, we didn’t achieve our target as Al Ain were too good today and we missed several scoring chances as well.”
Photo: Lagardère Sports