Coach Jorge Fossati said his Al-Sadd side had overcome “injustice” stemming from a foul-tempered semifinal after it became the first Qatari club to reach the Asian Champions League final. Al-Sadd will have its work cut out in the Nov. 5 final against Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors, which will be playing at home as it bids to keep Asia's top club title in South Korean hands for the third year running. Jeonbuk went through with a 2-1 victory over Al-Ittihad of Saudi Arabia in Wednesday's semifinals, to make it 5-3 on aggregate. But fellow K-League team Suwon Samsung Bluewings were unable to make it an all-Korean final. Although they beat Al-Sadd 1-0 away, they went out 2-1 on aggregate after the Qatari side's controversial 2-0 win in the first leg, when a mass brawl saw both teams trade punches in an ugly late-game melee. The Asian Football Confederation suspended two Al-Sadd players from the second leg, and one from Suwon. “You know we had to play this game with big injustice. We didn't have some players because of non-football issues,” Fossati said. “In this situation, we tried to do our best with whatever resources we had,” the Uruguayan said. Al-Sadd has won the continental championship before, in 1989, but under a previous format. An all-Korean final looked on course when Suwon's Oh Jang-Eun opened the scoring in Qatar with a sixth-minute strike. But Al-Sadd, missing suspended strikers Abdulkader Keita and Mamadou Niang, battened down the hatches and yielded just one more clear chance to Suwon which Mato Neretljak failed to make the most of. Suwon's coach Yoon Sung-Hyo said he was proud of his “jet-lagged” side's gutsy effort but lashed out at both their opponents and the officiating. “Al-Sadd was resorting to delaying tactics. It was not fair play,” Yoon was quoted as saying by Thursday's Sports Seoul daily. “The refereeing was also biased.” Jeonbuk will be without suspended captain Cho Sung-Hwan and striker Krunoslav Lovrek for the final.
