Durakovic proud of player in loss to the more superior Ulsan

Perak were given a footballing lesson by Korean side Ulsan Hyundai in the 5-1 defeat that ended their journey in the 2019 AFC Champions League.

No one gave Perak a fighting chance before the start of the match against Ulsan and that was how the match transpired to be. The perception heading into the game was a matter of how many goals will Ulsan win by and not if they could be stopped from reaching the Champions League group stage.

Mehmed Durakovic's side did put in a relatively good shift in the first half to only go in 1-0 down at half time. Amirul Azhan was unfortunate to have put the ball into his own net but his blushes could have been saved had Gilmar Filho not waste a very good opportunity before the break.

For Durakovic, it was an important lesson to be learned by his team and he was not overly concerned by the margin of the defeat, calling the difference between the two sides vast and admitted that his team had already played to their level best.

"We knew it was going to be a very tough game for us. This is a very new experience for us, this is the first time that Perak have been into this competition so we knew it was going to be a very big task for us. But to be quite honest, we played well for 90 minutes. Half time 1-0 with an own goal was very good but in the second half Ulsan showed how good a side they are." 

They've good local and foreign players. They are a different class to us but I'm very proud of my players. This is history for us, we created it and I thought we did really well. 5-1 for us is not a very bad result because Ulsan are a very good side," said Durakovic in the post-match press conference.

Dave Bulthuis, Junior Negrao and Mix Diskerud all put in an impressive performance for the home side but in comparison Perak's trio of Wander Luiz, Gilmar and Leandro dos Santos failed to live up to the occasion and that put paid to Perak's hopes of pushing Ulsan to the limit.

Exiting the competition, Perak will now shift their focus back to the domestic competition starting with the Super League where they will face Felda United at home on Feb 23. They are currently 10th in the league and have not won in a any of their opening two matches played thus far in the league.


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