Adelaide United is still upbeat about the home leg of its AFC Champions League quarter final despite its 3-0 loss to Sydney FC on Saturday.
The Reds should welcome back a number of key players who were either rested or recovering from injury during their Round 5 clash with the Sky Blues.
United coach Aurelio Vidmar said the team took a conservative approach into the game in a hope of getting some players up for their Hindmarsh Stadium match on Wednesday.
“Travis (Dodd) and Diego had quite heavy corkies and we didn’t want to risk them. A couple of them were forced (changes); Fabian Barbiero and Lucas Pantelis had slight groin strains,” Vidmar said on his undermanned squad.
Vidmar said fatigue had been an issue during the game against Sydney FC but added he was disappointed with his team’s intensity in the first half.
“We’ve had a good look at the tape already and certainly the pressure on the ball in the first half was non-existent and then in the second half they certainly picked up,” he said.
“If you look at the last 15 or so minutes we were running well on top of Sydney so that’s a good sign as well.”
And Vidmar was confident the players could hit back against the Kashima Antlers.
“It’s disappointing that we lost but it’s not the end of the world, there’s still a lot of football to be played,” he said.
“The good thing about it is there is only a couple of days to prepare for Wednesday night’s game so everybody has got to get on board and start concentrating and focusing on what we need to do.”
“We’ve set ourselves up for a fantastic second leg and hopefully we can get through that.”
Goalkeeper Eugene Galekovic, who is one of the few players to take part in all of the Reds’ last three games, said his team-mates were already looking towards the clash on Wednesday.
The former Melbourne Victory player said United would be trying to win the game rather than defend against their classy Japanese opponent.
“You play to win and we’ll try to score, we’ll try to make it as easy as possible and if we score it will help us and if we scored two we’ll definitely be through,” he said.
“We can’t rely on a 0-0 score-line because anything can happen in football and if you are going to rely on that and they score in the last minute it would be destroying.”
