BACOLOD CITY—The outcome was expected, but the scoreline and performance once again showed the leap in the level of play of Ceres Negros in the past few months.
The Busmen matched an AFC Cup record on a rainy Tuesday night, pummeling Cambodian champions Boeung Ket, 9-0, at the start of Group F play at Panaad Stadium.
Following strong performances in the upset of Brisbane Roar and in the loss to Tianjin Quanjian in the AFC Champions League qualifying rounds, the Busmen stamped their quality on a dispirited Boeung Ket side as if to say they deserve to be playing in a higher level competition.
The win matched the biggest margin in AFC Cup history set by Uzbekistan’s Nasaf Qarshi in its win over Dempo of India in 2011.
Relentless on attack and hardly giving anything away defensively, Ceres took the fight out of the Cambodians with five goals in the first 31 minutes.
A brace each from Takumi Uesato, Bienve Marañon and OJ Porteria and a goal apiece from captain Carlie de Murga and substitute Manny Ott propelled the Busmen to a record-setting night.
“We went out there to fight because we never expected an easy game,” Vidakovic said.
“I think we need to have this mentality in every game even if we are winning, we keep going, we keep fighting, we keep working for the team with the same intensity for the 90 minutes.”