Chinese club Changchun Yatai have denied watering their pitch to turn it into an “ice rink” for their Asian Champions League tie against South Korea’s Jeonbuk Motors today.
The city in China’s northeast is one of the country’s coldest with regular snowfall and temperatures plummeting well below 0°C at this time of year.
In Changchun’s last home match in the competition earlier this month, they won 9-0 against Indonesia’s Persipura Jayapura, who are based on the island of New Guinea where temperatures average 25°C throughout the year.
“I heard that with the previous game with the Indonesian team it went down below 15 degrees,” Jeonbuk coach Choi Kang-hee told Sports Seoul TV on Monday.
“I also heard that they pour water on the ground at night. It seems like we may have to play our game on an ice rink.”
Changchun coach Shen Xiangfu denied the accusation at a news conference early yesterday.
“Such an accusation is totally untrue,” he said. “Our visitors, please don’t worry. We never do such things like watering the pitch to make it an ice rink.”
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