More than ten months after the campaign began, the AFC Champions League‘s West Zone finally got to its business end on Sunday and Monday as what will be a whirlwind knockout round began with the last-16 ties.
With Asia’s premier club competition in a transitional season as it shifts to a September-to-May calendar, the 2022 campaign will extend to this May – which explains why the round of 16 in the western half of the competition is only just taking place now.
But it was business as usual for some of the tournament’s usual suspects as a handful of favourites advanced — albeit with varying degrees of comfort — into the quarterfinals, which will be held on Thursday before Sunday’s semifinal determines who meet Japan’s Urawa Red Diamonds — the finalists from the East Zone — in the decider later this year.
Here, we take a look at four things we learned from the round-of-16 ties that took place over the past two days.
Zakaria emerges as hero as Al Duhail toil for quarterfinal berth
