Last-gasp goal carries Jeonbuk through to Champions League quarterfinals

Football

Published: 19 Aug. 2022, 10:33

Last-gasp goal carries Jeonbuk through to Champions League quarterfinals

Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors' Song Min-kyu, right, celebrates after scoring a goal in the first half of a round of 16 AFC Champions League match against Daegu at Urawa Komaba Stadium in Japan on Thursday. [AFP/YONHAP]

Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors edged out Daegu FC in a nail biter of an AFC Champions League round of 16 match on Thursday, scoring the winning goal in injury time after 120 minutes of deadlock.

It was substitute Kim Jin-kyu who pulled through for Jeonbuk at Urawa Komaba Stadium in Urawa, Japan, scoring the go-ahead goal to break a 1-1 tie in the first minute of injury time after 90 minutes of regulation time and 30 minutes of extra time.

Kim had only been on the pitch for 10 minutes when he scored the winning goal.

After a scoreless first half, Jeonbuk had taken the lead barely seconds after the second half kicked off, when Song Min-kyu picked up a cross from Han Kyo-won and fired it into the back of the net.

That 1-0 lead did not last for long, however, with Daegu’s Zeca taking a punt from distance to tie the score at 1-1 in the 56th minute.

Then began an hour-long deadlock, with multiple efforts from both teams proving ineffective. Throughout, the game was Jeonbuk’s to win, with the North Jeolla side controlling a huge 75 percent of the ball and firing off 22 shots to Daegu’s eight.

When Kim’s go-ahead goal finally arrived, it was more luck than anything else. Moon Seon-min headed the ball in the direction of the goal, only for a Daegu defender to pick it up. The clearance that followed pinged straight off another defender, bouncing to Kim’s feet right in front of the goal.

Kim, who was very much in the right place at the right time, only had to finish the job.

With the win, Jeonbuk are now the only Korean side left in the continental tournament. The North Jeolla side have a prestigious Champions League record, having qualified for the tournament 15 times and won it twice, in 2006 and 2016. They reached the quarterfinals last year, after beating Thai club BG Pathum United in the round of 16.

Jeonbuk advanced to the round of 16 this year after a fairly lackluster group campaign, winning only one leg of each of the three group stage match-ups to finish second in Group H — a 0-0 draw and a 3-2 win against Australian side Sydney FC, a 1-1 draw and a 1-0 win against Japanese club Yokohama F. Marinos, and a 1-0 win and a 1-1 draw against Vietnamese side Hoàng Anh Gia Lai.

BY JIM BULLEY [jim.bulley@joongang.co.kr]