Newcastle Jets coach Gary van Egmond has described his side’s 2-0 win over Korean side Hyundai Ulsan in match day two of the Asian Champions League as ‘fantastic’.
The Jets bounced back from last week’s 2-0 away loss to Beijing Guoan in their opening match in the 2009 ACL to put their campaign back on track with an impressive home victory.
New striker Sasho Petrovski was the star for the home side netting two first half goals as Newcastle outplayed its Korean opponents in a dominate first-half display.
Ulsan was the more impressive side in the second half but the Jets defence was never really troubled by the K-League outfit and the hosts held on comfortably to register their first win in the prestigious competition.
“It was very pleasing obviously here at our home ground and in front of our home supporters,” van Egmond said after the match.
“Taking into account the fact that we lost our opening match it was imperative that we won tonight.”
“I thought the guys in the front third did well in changing the point of the attack especially in the first half.”
“The second half we tried to protect our 2-0 lead a little bit. We really should have pushed out and played the game a little bit higher on the pitch.”
“But the boys were pretty determined not to concede any soft goals and we were really well marshaled at the back by Ljubo (Milicevic) giving instructions and the two wide players in Fabio (Vignaroli) and Tarek (Elrich) worked extremely hard and then the boys who came on did the job as well.”
“So taking everything into consideration it was a fantastic effort.”
Ulsan head coach Kim Ho Kon said he was disappointed by the loss but happy with the effort from his youthful team.
“We lost our first match so really needed to win today, so it wasn’t a good result for us,” he said.
“The first half we gave away the ball too easily and were out-muscled by the physical nature of the Newcastle players and I think the younger players were a little bit overawed with the experience of the big match.”
Ho Kon said he had no regrets in the decision to leave 12 regular players in the Ulsan squad back in Korea and field a virtual ‘second string’ team.
“No, not at all,” he said. “It was a really good chance for the younger players and they have shown some good potential for the future.”
He added that despite the team’s two losses in the first two games in the ACL he hasn’t given up hope of turning their fortunes around and qualifying for the next round.
“We will just concentrate on the next game at home,” Ho Kon said. “We need to win it so we will for the home fans and then we will see what happens after that.”
