By SCM Sports Writer
CHUNCHEON, SOUTH KOREA—The Chuncheon Tiger Bowl, usually a roaring cauldron of K-League faithful, was reduced to a stunned whisper last night as Japanese visitors Machida Zelvia delivered a ruthless 1-3 masterclass to dismantle Gangwon FC in the AFC Champions League.
If the 20,000-seat stadium was meant to intimidate, Machida clearly didn’t get the memo.
They treated the famously hostile arena like a private training ground, scoring two goals in a devastating three-minute blitz that left the home crowd DUMBFOUNDED.
The onslaught began on 25 minutes. A sleek move saw Kelya Sento slam home the opener, sending a wave of silence across the Tiger Bowl’s lower tier.
Before the volume could recover, the dagger was twisted deeper: Hokuto Shimoda followed up just three minutes later (28’) with a crisp finish, silencing the entire east stand and leaving Gangwon boss Kim Yong-soo looking like a man who’d just seen a ghost.
Gangwon defender Park Ho-Young managed to provide a brief, desperate pulse of life for the home side, netting a scrappy goal just before the half-time whistle.
The noise inside the stadium temporarily returned to its usual deafening roar, offering a sliver of hope that the men in orange could claw their way back in the second half.
But Machida were having none of it.
Any thoughts of a famous comeback were brutally extinguished after the break. The biggest moment of the night belonged to the man who started his career in the K-League: Se-Hun Oh.
The Machida striker completed the rout in the 56th minute with a thunderous strike that left the Gangwon keeper grasping at thin air. The goal was the ultimate psychological blow, turning the Chuncheon Tiger Bowl from a hotbed of football passion into a funereal procession.
Machida Zelvia, spearheaded by the impressive Sento and the clinical Se-Hun Oh, leave South Korea with three crucial points and a performance that will send shockwaves across the continent. For Gangwon, the post-mortem in Chuncheon will be long and painful.
