The midday sun shone through the cabin, and the hour hand at 12:20 pointed to the departure time of Shanghai Harbor Team. They boarded China Eastern Airlines flight MU8533 and embarked on their journey to Bangkok, Thailand.
Next Wednesday, June 23, they will have their first match in the AFC East Asian Champions League playoffs against Kaya FC of the Philippines.
The match will be held at the Lions Stadium in northern Bangkok, and the drums of war are about to beat at 10 p.m. BST.
Although Shanghai Harbour had 26 players on the AFC Champions League entry list, only 20 ended up traveling with the team to Thailand due to quarantine measures upon return and the upcoming Chinese Super League.
Of the 20 players, Nie Meng and Lei Wenjie are first-team players playing in the AFC Champions League, while Chen Wei, Du Jia, Zhang Wei, Zhang Yi and Chen Chunxin have stayed in Shanghai to prepare for the upcoming restart of the Chinese Super League.
Four players - Fu Huan, Hu Jinghang, Lei Wenjie and Yu Hao - have experience of making AFC Champions League appearances, while most of the other players represented Harbour in the AFC Cup last year when the first-team squad traveled to Doha to play in the AFC Champions League.
At Pudong International Airport, Sun Xiang, Deputy General Manager of Shanghai Harbor Salon, communicated with the young players one by one, urging them to pay attention to the discipline of the game, abide by the rules of epidemic prevention, and make every effort to seize the opportunity to show themselves.
Takayuki Kaneko, a youth training staffer with an AFC coaching certificate, is the acting head coach of this AFC Champions League team, while local coach Wu Bing has been leading the team in training.
Going abroad to compete during the epidemic, Shanghai Harbor Salon attaches great importance to epidemic prevention. The whole team has completed the vaccination and is equipped with sufficient protective clothing, masks, eye masks and other epidemic prevention supplies.
If successful in the play-offs, the Seaports will remain in Thailand to continue in Group F of the AFC East Asian Championship. In the same group will be South Korea's Ulsan Hyundai, Vietnam Telecom and hosts Thai champions Pathum United.Group matches in Group F will be played from June 26th to July 11th. (Harbour Team News)
