The AFC Champions League 2015 (ACL) enters matchday 4 of the group stage on Tuesday 7 and Wednesday 8 April. Kashima Antlers face the 2013 ACL champions Guangzhou Evergrande at home. Prior to the beginning of new season, this article reviews the official press conference held on 6 April.

Head Coach and Players' Comments

Toninho Cerezo, Head Coach (Kashima Antlers)
This match is everything to us. Guangzhou Evergrande are the strongest team of this group, so I expect the match tomorrow will be very difficult, but we simply want to get the victory and getting strong vocal encouragement from our supporters. Last time, Guangzhou Evergrande beat us 4-3, but both of us played very well with aggressive style of play. We will show our respect to the opponents tomorrow, but will just go and try to get the points from winning. Last Friday, we had a match so we have concentrated on recovering from tiredness for a couple of days. Considering we have lost the first matches, we are free from too much pressure to get a victory; we can be more relaxed to get ready for the match.

TAKASAKI Hiroyuki (Kashima Antlers)
Even though we have lost the previous three matches, we still have a chance if we can win the next three matches. Tomorrow, we really have to win to go through so we will face the opponent with full of our power and want to get a victory. When we played against Guangzhou Evergrande last time we lost but I still think we did pretty well. Now we are not too nervous after winning the match in J. LEAGUE last week, it is important for us to keep winning.

Fabio Cannavaro, Head Coach (Guangzhou Evergrande)
We have not got good results in our domestic league, but we still have an important aim to win the ACL. It is difficult for us considering we have some players with injuries and the schedule is tight having only three to four days between matches, but we just play as much as possible in each match. Tomorrow, we want to get a good result; this is the good trial for us to test how much we can do in difficult situations.

Zheng Zhi (Guangzhou Evergrande)
Tomorrow we are playing away from home, where it is completely different from our home stadium, so I think we’ll have some unexpected things happen. Just like what our Head Coach has said, it is important for us to play at our best. Currently our team has been trying various combinations since we have new players. We are still on the way to creating the best combination, but we are making it better gradually. Even though we haven’t got good results in our domestic league, we players know that there are good times and bad times. I think it is important to unite ourselves to play well tomorrow.

AFC Chamapions League 2015 

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