Adam Le Fondre said Sydney FC felt “hard done by” after narrowly missing out on a famous victory over Shanghai SIPG in the Asian Champions League on Wednesday night.
The Sky Blues were within six minutes of beating the star-studded Chinese champions, who boast Brazil internationals Oscar and Hulk in their line-up, alongside a host of outstanding homegrown stars.
Le Fondre and Siem de Jong each scored in a thrilling first half, but Sydney were twice pegged back by Shanghai. Alex Brosque seemed to have done enough to tip the tie the way of Steve Corica’s men on 84 minutes, only to see the Brazilian Elkeson smash home a third equaliser.
“We’re obviously disappointed,” Le Fondre told Fox Sports. “To throw away a lead a couple of times in a game like this against top-quality players, let’s not kid ourselves…but we gave a great account of ourselves.
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“We can feel hard done that we haven’t got the win because we’ve created numerous chances, their keeper’s made some great saves.
“We got 3-2 in front the last five minutes we expect to see the game out and we just couldn’t do it.”
Bittersweet night! Scored my first ACL goal but to not get the win as a team of which we deserved was gutting but roll on the derby on Saturday!! #sydneyisskyblue #ateam •
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Ps no I am not… https://t.co/ehJygbCizx— Adam Le Fondre (@A1F1E9) April 10, 2019
Despite the agony of missing out on a much-needed three points in Group H, Le Fondre relished the opportunity to come up against the likes of Oscar and Hulk.
“It’s one of the reasons why I came out here, to play in big games like this against top-quality opposition,” said the 32-year-old, who played in the English Premier League with Reading before joining Sydney FC in August 2018.
It’s always a dream of mine to test myself against better players and I thought we did really well tonight.”
Brazilian superstar Oscar, who played for Brazil at the 2014 FIFA World Cup and won two English Premier League titles with Chelsea, was relieved to have left the Harbour City with a valuable point in the bag for Shanghai.
“It was a good game,” he said. “It was difficult to play here against Sydney. We played a good match, we have a lot of injured players so 3-3 is a good result.
“The competition is very hard. It is not easy to come here and play against Sydney. [Shanghai] is getting better year by year and the Asian Champions League is a very good [standard].”
