Al-Hilal powered into the semi-finals of the Asian Champions League Elite in Jeddah on Friday as Jorge Jesus’s Saudi Pro League side demolished South Korea’s Gwangju 7-0 to move closer to a record-extending fifth continental title.<\/p>\n
Goals from Sergej Milinkovic-Savic, Marcos Leonardo and Salem Al-Dawsari inside the first 33 minutes sent the four-times champions on their way, with Aleksandar Mitrovic, Malcom, Nasser Al-Dawsari and Abdullah Al-Hamddan on target after the interval.<\/p>\n
“The players who played today were under a lot of pressure but they played at their usual level,” said Jesus. “Without their commitment we wouldn’t achieve what we achieved today. We are on the right path.”<\/p>\n
The result at a raucous King Abdullah Sports City Stadium means Al-Hilal will take on the winners of Saturday’s quarter-final between fellow Saudi Pro League side Al-Ahli and Thailand’s Buriram United.<\/p>\n
Al-Hilal, continental champions in 1991, 2000, 2019 and 2021 and runners-up on five other occasions, were several levels above the K-League side, who are appearing in the competition for the first time.<\/p>\n
Milinkovic-Savic gave the Saudi side the perfect start in the sixth minute, the midfielder peeling away from his marker to meet Salem Al-Dawsari’s corner with a glancing header that beat Kim Kyeong-in for pace from the edge of the six-yard box.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Al-Hilal powered into the semi-finals of the Asian Champions League Elite in Jeddah on Friday as Jorge Jesus’s Saudi Pro League side demolished South Korea’s Gwangju 7-0 to move closer to a record-extending fifth continental title. Goals from Sergej Milinkovic-Savic, Marcos Leonardo and Salem Al-Dawsari inside the first 33 minutes sent the four-times champions on …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47234,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47233\/revisions\/47234"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}