Kewell’s side won the first leg 2-1 in Japan two weeks ago and now head to the United Arab Emirates for the return at what is likely to be a packed Hazza bin Zayed Stadium.<\/p>\n
Former Leeds and Liverpool forward Kewell warned that Yokohama will have “everything against us” as the away team, but backed his men to lift the trophy for the first time.
\n“I’ve never been afraid of a challenge and I’m going to make sure my team’s not afraid of this challenge,” the Australian said after a 1-1 draw with FC Tokyo in the J. League on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“It’s going to be tough, but to win an ACL it has to be tough. Nothing’s given for free, you have to pay for it, you have to work for it.
\n“We have to suffer if we want to pick up this title,” added Kewell, who succeeded fellow Australian former international Kevin Muscat as Yokohama boss in late December.<\/p>\n
Crespo and Kewell are meeting as coaches in the AFC Champions League final almost 20 years after they faced off as players in the European equivalent.
\nCrespo was part of the AC Milan side that lost to Kewell’s Liverpool in the UEFA Champions League final in Istanbul in 2005.
\nThe Argentine great scored two goals as Milan took a 3-0 half-time lead before Liverpool famously roared back to draw 3-3 and win on penalties.<\/p>\n
Since the first leg of the final, Al Ain have lost one game and won the other in their domestic league. Yokohama have lost one and drawn one.
\nKewell admitted that the second leg of the final has cast a long shadow over his team’s league form. They are in the bottom half of the division with four victories from 13 league games.<\/p>\n
“You’d be lying if you hadn’t been thinking about this game, because it’s huge,” he said.
\n“I’ve been in this situation as a player as well – as much as you try to shake it off, it’s there in the background. So you have to be mentally strong and you have to be prepared.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kewell’s side won the first leg 2-1 in Japan two weeks ago and now head to the United Arab Emirates for the return at what is likely to be a packed Hazza bin Zayed Stadium. Former Leeds and Liverpool forward Kewell warned that Yokohama will have “everything against us” as the away team, but backed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":981475,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20967],"tags":[3733,28042],"class_list":["post-981474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-afc-news","tag-afc","tag-afc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=981474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/981475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=981474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=981474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=981474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}