SEOUL: The AFC Champions League quarter-final between the league winners of South Korea and Japan remains tightly poised after Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors and Gamba Osaka played out a scoreless draw in the first leg Wednesday.
The match in Seoul was an entertaining encounter that featured plenty of attacking endeavour but no goals.
Jeonbuk captain Lee Dong-Gook missed the best opportunity of the game midway through the second half, turning the ball narrowly wide of an open goal
The teams will meet again in the return match in Japan on September 16, with the winners advancing to meet either Chinese champions Guangzhou Evergrande or Japan's Kashiwa Reysol in the semi-finals.
Guangzhou are in firm control of that tie after a 3-1 win at Kashiwa in the first leg on Tuesday.
Jeonbuk won a 3-2 thriller when they last hosted Gamba in the competition nine years ago and the Korean side dominated possession in the opening half, outshooting their opponents by a wide margin.
However, they could not find a way through the visitors' defence with Lee, the competition's all-time leading scorer with 27 goals, missing their best chance just before half-time when he headed Choi Chul-Soon's cross narrowly wide.
Gamba came more into the game after the interval and nearly broke the deadlock in the 58th minute with a shot on the turn by Patric that went just off-target.
But the best opportunity fell to the hosts in the 65th minute when they carved open the Gamba defence on a swift counter-attack initiated by Luiz Henrique on the left.
The Brazilian played in Park Won-Jae, who turned the ball past goalkeeper Masaaki Higashiguchi to an unmarked Lee. He stretched to make contact with the ball but failed to turn it into the gaping goal.
Higashiguchi was called into action with 12 minutes left when he made a fine stop to turn aside Leonardo's fierce low drive from 25 metres as the teams settled for a goalless stalemate ahead of the second leg at Expo '70 Stadium in three weeks' time.
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