Reds not in awe of Chinese ACL giants

Feb 28, 2017 - 2:47 AM Rather than awe-struck, Adelaide United defender Ben Garuccio says it will be awesome to tackle some of soccer's massive stars against Chinese outfit Jiangsu Suning.

The Reds will cross paths with the likes of Brazilian superstars Alex Teixeira and Ramires in Wednesday night's Asian Champions League fixture in China.

Signing Teixeira and Ramires cost Jiangsu in the vicinity of $110 million - dwarfing Adelaide's A-League salary cap of $2.6m.

But Garuccio says the Reds won't be daunted by the big names.

"For me, that's awesome. These are the players you want to be coming up against in your career," Garuccio told AAP on Tuesday.

"Players like Ramires, Alex Teixeira - he was linked with Liverpool and the next minute he was in Jiangsu.

"For me it's really exciting to play against these players. I want to relish this opportunity as much as I can."

Jiangsu also boast Colombian attacker Roger Martinez, Chinese midfielder Wu Xi and South Korean international Hong Jeong-ho.

Adelaide travelled to China seeking a first group stage win in the ACL, after losing their opener against Japan's Gamba Osaka 3-0 in Adelaide.

"Obviously for us it wasn't good enough," Garuccio said of the Gamba result.

"There were just some things that they do that probably not many A-League teams do. Some of the players they have got, Endo in the midfield, he would make passes that very few a-League players would look for.

"Even just the way they set-up made it very hard for us to go forward. A lot of people were complaining about us going backwards but it's actually very, very hard to even make the decision to go forward because they set up so well.

"But for us, we just need to lift and lift to their level.

"It wasn't the result we wanted against Gamba but similar to Brisbane when they came over and played against Shanghai, it's the same thing for us - we want to get points.

"There's no reason why we can't. They have obviously got some big names but we're looking for the win."

Source: AAP