Kawasaki Frontale fell just short in its Asian Champions League Elite final against Saudi Arabia’s Al-Ahli in Jeddah on Saturday night, but Shigetoshi Hasebe’s side can still take plenty of solace from its performance in the competition.
A 2-0 defeat against a squad worth an estimated $200 million playing in front of almost 60,000 of its own fans at its home stadium is nothing to be ashamed of, and to say the odds were stacked against Frontale is something of an understatement.
As with so many recent developments in global soccer, the Asian Football Confederation’s (AFC) new centralized format for its showpiece club competition was heavily influenced by the flexing of Saudi Arabian financial muscle.
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