After watching his Inter Milan teammates come through the opening match 3-0 against Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma, the Asian champions from South Korea, Maicon, the Brazilian defender of the Italian giants, said that performance does not guarantee them victory over TP Mazembe in the final.
"We went into this game knowing what happened to Internacional the other night," Maicon said through an interpreter.
"As a Brazilian, I am not sorry that we are not meeting a Brazilian team in the final. TP Mazambe have come through that game and we respect them as an opponent. We watched them the other night and they won't be an easy side to defeat.
"Against Seongnam, it was our first game and it's always a nice to start with a win as we did tonight.
"This win will certainly relieve a lot of pressure, which we have to go through because of the poor results we have had in recent times. We scored early and that did help us.
"To score an early goal and to have a 2-0 lead at the break provided us a strong platform. We had the match under our control from there onwards. We take every game seriously and be prepared for the next game."
Dejan Stankovic put the Italian giants ahead in the third minute and Javier Zanetti doubled it past the half-hour mark before Diego Milito completed an impressive performance with a third in the 73rd minute for Inter to book a passage in the final with TP Mazembe on Saturday evening.
"Like we scored early and put the pressure on Al Wahda in our first game, they did the same to us with an early goal," said Dzenan Radoncic, Seongnam's Montenegrin forward.
"Still we played well and we created chances. We had equal opportunities to score, they did and we didn't. If you don't score from the chances against a team like Inter, obviously we can't win. That's what happened to us."
