Kolkata: East Bengal didn’t have the luck of the draw but will look to home advantage and lessons from last season’s heartbreak as compensation in the AFC Asian Women’s Champions League group stage.

The India champions will start against last year’s quarter-finalists Ho Chi Minh City in the second match on Sunday. The group will be kick off with league champions of North and South Korea, April 25 SC and Hwacheon KSPO WFC, taking on each other.

The top two in each of the three groups and two of the best third-placed teams will qualify for the quarter-finals. Last year, a goal in the seventh minute of stoppage-time helped Uzbekistan’s FC Nasaf make the cut at East Bengal’s expense. East Bengal lost 0-3, and had they been able to keep the margin of defeat to two goals, they would have been the first Indian team in the last-eight stage of Asia’s top women’s competition.

“One error,” Anthony Andrews had told HT after the match last November. The East Bengal head coach attributed it to a lack of experience “playing in such situations.” On Saturday, Andrews, 30, said: “Most of those who experienced that heartbreak are with us. Though we missed narrowly, we learnt a lot from that and hopefully this time we can push towards making history.”

Andrews, India’s most successful coach with four Indian Women’s League titles, two of which have come in the last two seasons with East Bengal, didn’t agree that the opening match would be more crucial than the other two given that they are against Korean heavyweights. However, he said, “It would set the tone for the campaign.”

“Let’s accept it: all three teams come from countries that can play and they are all champions of their leagues. Ho Chi Minh City have just finished the league (on October 23) while ours have not started,” said Andrews. Which means that while the team from Vietnam have played 12 competitive matches, East Bengal have had to make do with 10 friendlies, all with age-group boys' teams.

That said, East Bengal have retained the core of the squad that became the first from India to make the Asian finals in two successive seasons. And they have added Hitomi Tanaka from Japan, Olivia Anokye, Abigail Antwi and Adama Alhassan (all from Ghana) to the squad that already had Ugandans Fazila Ikwaput and Resty Narzari and Ghanaian Abena Okopu. The last three are internationals and Tanaka has played in the second division in Spain and Holland.

“Itomi can play through the lines but then one player can make a difference only if the other 10 pitch in,” said Andrews. East Bengal have been training since the middle of September, he said.

East Bengal have nine India players, their opponents on Sunday have eight in the national team of Vietnam. Vietnam played in the 2023 World Cup where they lost all three group games and didn’t score a goal.

They play South Korea champions Hwacheon KSPO WFC on Wednesday and end against North Korea’s 4.25 SC whose men’s team lost 0-3 to Bengaluru FC in the 2016 AFC Cup. With Naegohyang FC also in the fray as defending champions, North Korea are the only country with two teams in this edition. Most of their national team players are in these two clubs.

North Korea are a top team having won the AFC Women’s Asian Cup thrice and been runners-up three times. They were the under-20 World Cup champions in 2024 and runners-up this year. North Korea are also the two-time reigning under-17 world champions having won the competition four times. In the AFC Women’s Asian Cup, North Korea lost to hosts Australia 1-2 in the quarter-finals. South Korea were semi-finalists in the last Asian championship.