Kerr, who clinched the WSL Golden Boot award in her first full season in England, and Korea Republic's Ji So-yun will now look to power Chelsea to complete an English and European double when they face Barcelona in the Champions League final in Gothenburg next Sunday.

The Londoners, who saw off Bayern Munich 5-3 on aggregate in the semi-finals, are bidding to become European champions for the first time.

Some are AFC Champions League veterans, some made their debut in the competition, some have been eliminated while others will continue to challenge for the title of the 2021 AFC Champions League top scorer, but what they all have in common is that their 26 goals combined were some of the finest highlights of the first part of the competition.

As the continental competition takes a break before resuming with the East Asia group stage in the months ahead, the-AFC.com looks back at some of the numbers that stood out as the 2021 AFC Champions League got underway in India, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

From high-scoring forwards to those that create the goals and win the ball back, we shine the spotlight on the players whose statistics stood out as the continental competition got underway in West Asia.

The venue – the home ground the Kyrgyz Republic national team – was in action for Kyrgyz Premier League matches on Friday and Saturday night, paving the way for Group E of the continental tournament, which begins on Friday.

Think of a technical role in a football organisation and Gary Philips is likely to have some first-hand knowledge of it. Men or women, clubs or national teams, coaching players or educating coaches; he has seen and done it all.

A former title-winning player and head coach in top-flight men's football in Australia, he has gone on to build an extensive and varied résumé featuring roles in Malaysia, Vietnam and Tonga, to name a few, but the biggest challenge is arguably still to come.

His football journey took him Nepal in 2019, when he became the All Nepal Football Association’s Technical Director; a role he still holds but one which, since February, comes with the added responsibility of leading the women's national team in their bid to secure an unprecedented qualification for Asia’s premier women’s competition.

Describing every AFC Champions League match as a learning curve, the young goalkeeper said the experience gained was tremendous.

FC Goa went into their AFC Champions League debut with the odds stacked against them but more than held their own in a Group E that had two-time runnersup Persepolis FC of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Al Wahda FSCC of the UAE and Qatar's Al Rayyan.