Big cake for Chinese soccer before Spring Festival

The rallying Chinese soccer tasted a big cake on Tuesday, one day before the Spring Festival Eve, as Beijing Guoan and Guangzhou Fuli roared into the AFC Champions League (ACL) to gift China a four-team tour of the 32-strong Asian top-level club tournament.

Fuli not only created history to debut in the tournament but also made Guangzhou boast of sending its two top-flight clubs into the tournament for the first time. The other is four-time Chinese Super League (CSL) champions Guangzhou Evergrade, who were also crowned in the ACL 2013.

Both Guoan and Fuli made three goals to tame their opponents and the Chinese players, instead of foreign stars, showed their better form and played the key role in the duels.

In the third-round qualifier in Beijing, Guoan, last year's CSL runners-up, dominated the game against Bangkok Glass from the start to the end.

New winger Song Boxuan filled the vacancy left by midfield talent Zhang Xizhe who had joined German Bundesliga giants Wolvesberg. Song lift Guoan to 1-0 lead in the 17th minute with a sharp-witted tap-in at a goalmouth melee from a corner attack.

Song shone again on 64 minutes, gifting Guoan a penalty kick which was cashed in by his midfield partner Pablo Batalla from Argentina, who sealed the win at 3-0 in the 73rd minute.

Song expressed his thanks to the fans coming to the stadium at the cold night and told the press after the match that he would do better in the future.

Guoan head coach Gregorio Manzano from Spain sang highly of Song's performance and showed his confidence to lead his team to advance further in the AFC Champions League.

Guoan are automatically into Group G with Urawa Red Diamonds from Japan, Suwon Samsung Bluewings from South Korea and Brisbane Roar from Australia.

In Sydney, Jiang Ning and Lu Lin scored a goal in each half to give Gaungzhou Fuli, who finished third in last year's CSL, a 3-1 win over the Central Coast Mariners.

Jiang danced past a defender in the box and opened the scoring only eight minutes into the game, and Lu made it 2-0 in the 57th. Central Coast defender Joshua Rose conceded an own goal in the 89th before Glen Trifiro scored a consolation goal in the injury time.

Guangzhou Fuli join Gamba Osaka from Japan, South Korean side Seongnam FC, and Buriram United of Thailand in Group F, with their first game of the competition at Osaka next Tuesday.

According to the new rule, the Chinese Super League has a two-plus-two ACL quota, which means the league champions and the CSL Cup winners automatically qualify while the two close followers of the league champions have to go through ACL qualifiers. Shandong Luneng are the last year's CSL Cup winners.