Melbourne City’s Asian Champions League Elite campaign came to a frustrating end on Tuesday night after they were knocked out by Thai Champions Buriram United on penalties.
Aurelio Vidmar’s side were bidding to become the first Australian side to reach the quarter-finals of the ACL Elite since 2014, and their chances of doing so were boosted in the 21st minute when Buriram’s Robert Zulj was sent off for violent conduct.
With a man advantage City dominated possession at the Chang Arena and created numerous opportunities only to be denied by Buriram keeper Neil Etheridge.
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Daniel Arzani fired an effort straight at the keeper in the 31st minute whilst the in-form Marcus Younis then produced an oustanding bicycle kick which flew narrowly wide of the post in the 58th minute.
City striker Max Caputo had a glorious chance to win it for the visitors in the 89th minute before then wasting a guilt-edged chance right at the start of extra-time that could well have seen City through.
As it was though the visitors were reduced to 10 men deep into extra time as German Ferreyra was shown a straight red card for violent conduct before Etheridge was then the hero in the penalty shoot-out, saving spotkicks from both Ryan Teague and Aziz Behich, enabling Socceroo Kenny Dougall to fire Buriram through to the next round with the decisive penalty.
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“I think we had a fantastic performance tonight,” said Melbourne City boss Vidmar when speaking at his post-match press conference.
“But we didn’t manage to get the winning goal in normal time, nor in extra time. We had some decent chances, to be honest, defended very, very well for a long time.
“But I think this one is difficult to take, because we I think this is one that certainly went past us tonight.
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He continued: “They defended well, they defended desperately, and we had a few chances that we didn’t take. The game went to extra time, obviously, and then we still couldn’t score, and then when we go into a penalty shootout, it’s always 50/50, it’s a lottery.
“They took theirs better than us.
“It’s always difficult to talk about takeaways from this game, but I think for me, would be the the way we played in this whole tournament.
“I know tonight is going to hurt, hurt the players a lot, but the way we played in this tournament to get to the round of 16 has been an enormous achievement for us.
“Very proud of the players. They fought very, very hard, and unfortunately, it didn’t go our way tonight.”
