John Obi Mikel and Brown Ideye were on parade as Tianjin Teda and Jiangsu Suning played out a goalless draw at Nanjing Olympic Sports Centre on Friday.
The Chinese Super League encounter was Ideye’s debut for the Tigers since his move from Olympiacos, but he was uninspiring as he fluffed several scoring chances.
After their opening day defeat to Shandong Luneng, Tianjin Teda came with the ambition of picking their first win of the season, but their dream got shattered no thanks to harvest of misses plus fine goalkeeping from Sipeng Zhang.
Captain Mikel had a good outing – though joined Ximing Pan, Dong Wang and Jiakang Hui in the defence to curtail Boyu Yang and Xiaotian Yang’s attacking forays.
In the second half, Jiangsu controlled proceedings, but looked short of inspiration in the final third after injured Song Wang was substituted after 46 minutes.
The result means Teda boast of one point from two games to place 11th on the log. They host Chongqing Lifan in their next outing on April 2.
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