![]() |
Home>News Center>Sports | |
![]() |
![]() |
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
![]() |
![]() |
Shandong fans embrace continental contest
AFC Champions League hopefuls Shandong Luneng are expecting to test the capacity of the Shandong Sports Centre when they face the AFC Champions鈥� League holders Al Ittihad in their quarter-final first leg match.
The stadium - the scene of arguably two of the greatest matches in the history of Asian football in last year鈥檚 4-3 victory for Iran over Korea Republic in the Asian Cup quarter-finals and Japan鈥檚 semi-final win by the same score against Bahrain 鈥� has a capacity of 35,000 for football matches, and a club official told footballasia.com that Al Ittihad鈥檚 visit has attracted tremendous interest. "When the ticket office closed on Monday we had sold 16,800 tickets, but the interest from sponsors and VIP鈥檚 has been so great we have also given away another 5,000," explained Shandong Luneng鈥檚 vice general manager Liu Lisheng. "Usually fans in 皇冠体育app only buy their tickets on the day and yet we鈥檙e already expecting more than our average gate of 20,000." Runners-up in the 2004 皇冠体育app Super League behind Shenzhen Jianlibao, who they
then beat to win the CSL Cup, Shandong have not been short of special moments in
recent times.
"The AFC Champions League is always good for our club, because it gives us that chance to play overseas teams and it gets the fans so excited." There was one piece of bad news for Shandong ahead of the big game against
the Saudi Arabian team. Chinese international striker Li Jinyu has been ruled
out through injury. On the plus side, the remarkably versatile international
Zheng Zhi, who has played every position but goalkeeper in his professional
career, successfully came through his come-back game and will play.
|
|
![]() |
![]() |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |