Wu Xinghan (L) of China's Shandong Luneng FC heads for the ball while Hayashi Takuto (R), goalkeeper of Japan's Sanfrecce Hiroshima, saves the ball but hit his teammate Shiotani Tsukasa during their Group H fifth round match at the 2016 AFC Champions League in Jinan, capital of east China's Shandong Province, April 20, 2016. Shandong Luneng FC won the match by 1-0. (Xinhua/Zhu Zheng)
Brazilian striker Diego Tardelli Martins' header secured his team, Shandong Luneng FC, a 1-0 win over Japan's Sanfrecce Hiroshima Wednesday in the Group F match of the 2016 Asian Champions League (ACL).
With one group match left, the victory has already sent the Chinese team into the knockout stage of Asia's premier soccer club tournament, something Luneng has not achieved in 11 years.
Luneng played actively on the offensive end and kept pressuring Sanfrecce with waves of attacks throughout the first half. Receiving a free kick from the left side, Tardelli knocked in a header in the 10th minute to give his team the lead.
Faced with concrete defense from their opponents, the Japanese team hardly challenged the goal on Luneng's side, with a 42-minute long-range shot by defender Tsukasa Shiotani saved by Luneng's goalkeeper Wang Dalei.
The second half saw Sanfrecce's several attempts to attack Luneng's defense line, yet Luneng, which had to rely on counterattacks, kept the narrow lead through thanked to Wang's savings.
Commenting on why his team has never made it to the knockout phase since 2005, Luneng's head coach Mano Menezes said it's important to learn from the mistakes.
"The hard-won victory has added to our players' confidence, which will push us to go further," Menezes said.
Tardelli, for his part, said it doesn't matter who scored the goal, it's important that the team won the game. He had been under pressure for poor performance before the game, in which he was nominated the player of the match.
Having coached Sanfrecce since 2012, Moriyasu Hajime expressed his regret that he failed for the third time to lead the team to go through to the knockout phase in the ACL.
