Crespo then moved to Al Ain and got his revenge, knocking out Al-Hilal, the most successful team in Asian history with four titles, at the same last-four stage in April.
Cristiano Ronaldo’s Al-Nassr team were eliminated in the previous round.
Morocco’s Soufiane Rahimi took the headlines with five goals against the two Saudi giants.
“We talk so much about the two teams we eliminated because we were underdogs in the quarter-finals and semi-finals, and we go through,” Crespo said.
“We always need to say thank you to the players, congratulations to the players. They believe, they work hard, they fight, and they deserve to go through. There are great people working very hard in Al Ain and they deserve this moment. I’m very happy to be part of it.”
The UAE team won the 2003 final but have lost their past two final appearances: in 2005 to Al-Ittihad of Saudi Arabia and then, in 2016, to South Korea’s Jeonbuk Motors.
Yokohama however, have never been here before despite winning the J.League title five times. It means that Kewell, who has been in the job less than six months, is on the brink of history.
The former Leeds and Liverpool winger’s coaching career had also looked to be a thing of the past. It started in 2017 at League Two’s Crawley Town which he left just over a year later to take over at Notts County.
That’s when it started to go wrong. Kewell, who came on as a second-half substitute as Liverpool lost the 2007 final 2-1 to Milan, was fired after 11 league games.
At Oldham Athletic there were seven months and then just seven games in charge of Barnet before the club, in England’s fifth tier, handed the 45-year-old his marching orders in September 2021.
Enter Ange Postecoglou. In June 2022 the then-Celtic boss gave his fellow Australian the job of first-team coach at the Scottish giants.
Postecoglou arrived in Glasgow after leading Yokohama to the 2019 Japanese title and, as he left Japan in 2021, the now Tottenham Hotspur boss recommended Kevin Muscat as his successor.
Muscat, a tough-tackling former Australian international defender who played for Crystal Palace, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Rangers and Millwall, continued the good work at the Kanagawa club, winning the title in 2022.
Muscat’s last game in charge in December – he headed to China to take over Shanghai Port – was to win the Champions League group stage with Yokohama to give his successor a run at the knockout rounds. On New Year’s Eve, Kewell became the third successive Australian to take the reins and has tried to maintain the attacking and expansive football that was the hallmark of his predecessors.
