Despite suffering a 6-1 loss on Wednesday, Lion City Sailors have been handed a lifeline in the AFC Champions League Two quarterfinals after the first-leg result was overturned to a 3-0 win in their favour -- due to Sanfrecce Hiroshima fielding a suspended player.
The player in question -- Valère Germain -- is a recent arrival at the J1 League outfit and came off the bench for his debut against the Sailors, netting his team's fifth goal in the 74th minute.
However, it has since emerged that he was actually ineligible for the tie as he was supposed to be serving a three-game suspension that was imposed on him last March.
The suspension stemmed from an incident involving Germain when he was playing for previous team Macarthur FC in the now-defunct AFC Cup, which has been replaced as Asian football's second-tier club competition by the ACL Two.
With Macarthur coming up against fellow A-League side Central Coast Mariners in the ASEAN Zone final, his involvement in a post-match fracas saw Germain slapped with a retrospective three-game ban even though he was not sent off on the day itself.
In a statement released on Saturday, the Asian Football Confederation confirmed that Germain had indeed been ineligible for Wednesday's tie against the Sailors, who have now been awarded a 3-0 victory for that tie.
This now means that there is everything to play for once more in next week's return encounter at Jalan Besar Stadium.
While the Sailors' prospects initially looked all but over, they now have a three-goal advantage to protect -- and it will be interesting to see if they will set their stall out to defend given the obvious threat the opponents will pose.
Meanwhile, Sanfrecce should still be confident in their ability to score enough goals to turn the tie around, especially given the ease in which they carved apart the Sailors -- especially in the second half of the first leg.
Sanfrecce have also been slapped with a US$1,000 fine, while Germain is now deemed to have served the first of his three-match suspension.
It is peculiar that Sanfrecce have made such an oversight considering Japanese clubs are usually regarded as being among the best-organised in Asia.
Germain had only been signed at the end of February and was shaping up as an important reinforcement, given influential playmaker Tolgay Arslan could be sidelined for up to six months after suffering a serious injury in a league match against Yokohama FC.