Urawa Reds 1-3 Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors

Genki Haraguchi gave Urawa the lead after just six minutes but second half efforts from Lee Seung-gi, Lee Dong-gook and Eninho (Enio Oliveira Junior) secured the three points for Jeonbuk and leaves Urawa in difficulties as the Group Stage reaches the halfway point.

Victory moves Jeonbuk on to five points from their first three games while Urawa have three points having won against Muangthong United on Matchday 2 after losing to Guangzhou Evergrande.

“Urawa had three big chances 15 minutes into the game and they scored one of those three,” said Jeonbuk head coach Fabio Lefundes. “But if Urawa had scored one or two more goals out of those decisive chances they had, the game would have been much harder for us. They let us rally to win the game.

“We changed around our tactics to improve the situation around the 15th minute and then after halftime. But I don’t think we won the game because those changes worked out so well. It owes more to our players’ hard work.

“This is our first win in this year’s ACL and improved our points to five. But it is still too soon to talk about qualification to the next round as we need to see the results of the other games. We have only finished three matches and we cannot judge our chances of going through to the next stage or if our situation has been improved or so.”

Haraguchi gave Urawa the lead when the young striker took the ball off Tomoaki Makino’s toe after the former FC Koln defender had surged through the Jeonbuk midfield before clipping the ball beyond Kwoun Sun-tae.

Five minutes later, Haraguchi could have doubled his side’s advantage after a fine through ball by Keita Suzuki only to fire wide while, a further three minutes later, Marcio Richardes (Marcio Richardes de Andrade) looked set to score, only to push his effort off target.

Urawa’s dominance was virtually absolute in the opening quarter of the game with Jeonbuk threatening little save for Eninho’s free kick which went just over the bar.

Marcio Richardes went closer still in the 22nd minute when his right-foot curling free kick from 25 yards clipped the woodwork with Kwoun well beaten.

Jeonbuk gradually started to impose themselves on the game, however, and almost struck seven minutes before the end of the half in bizarre fashion when Kevin Oris blocked Nobuhiro Kato’s clearance, only for the ball to bounce harmlessly past the post.

Two minutes before the break, Urawa were denied again, this time Kwoun rescuing his side with a fine save from Haraguchi’s header, the 28-year-old pushing the ball around the post.

Yosuke Kashiwagi flicked the ball over the bar from close range when he should have scored five minutes after the restart and, less than a minute later, Jeonbuk were level when Lee Dong-gook – on as a substitute at the start of the half – laid the ball off to Lee Seung-gi and his right foot effort from 20 yards found the back of the net.

Lee Dong-gook put Jeonbuk in front 13 minutes later when he evaded Makino to head home Lee Seung-gi’s free kick from the right and, just six minutes later, Eninho put the result beyond doubt with an opportunist strike from distance that caught Kato off his line.

“It’s hard to make a comment after the game like this,” said Urawa head coach Mihailo Petrovic. “Losing a game like today’s was almost artistic: we had almost everything in our hands and ended up with an empty hand. We should have decided the game in the first half.

“The equalizer they scored early in the game to make it 1-1 shocked our team. After that goal, our players became rather naive and couldn’t show what we usually do in our training. If you don’t run hard enough, you cannot play football, especially for a team like us who play a passing game.

“Football is a dangerous sport. If you score first but keep missing out on decisive chances, you get punished, and that happened to us today.”

Photo: WSG