Leandro celebrates his first goal, Daejeon's first win of 2024

Daejeon Hana Citizen's Leandro says that his goal in the win over Ulsan HD is the start of his pursuit of bettering his goal contributions from last year. Now that the Purples are up and running for the season, Leandro says they can start to dream about the ultimate goal of reaching the AFC Champions League.

Brazilian forward Leandro opened the scoring on Tuesday night when Daejeon Hana Citizen beat the current South Korean champions Ulsan HD 2-0, pouncing on a misplaced pass by Kim Young-gwon just two minutes after the restart.

He then played a part in Daejeon's second, laying the ball into the path of Lee Hyun-sik who quickly found Kim In-gyun.

Happy with his first goal of 2024, Leandro talks about how the victory came at the "right time" and his dreams of helping Daejeon get a place in the Asian Champions League.

"I'm very happy for the goal, but even more so for the team's first victory in the league. We needed these three points and it came at the right time. 

"I hope we can maintain this good performance in the next rounds of the league to continue dreaming of our biggest goal of the season, which is a place in the Asian Champions League. We have the ambition to finish among the first placed," he stressed.

Leandro has maintained a good average of goal contributions since arriving in South Korean football. This season, the Brazilian has already scored a goal and provided an assist in the four matches played so far. The player talks about the good start to the year and wants to surpass the numbers from 2020. 

"It's been a good start, but there's still a lot of games ahead. I want to continue working to increasingly participate in Daejeon's goals. I always set a personal objective to surpass last season and this year I want to try to match or even surpass my numbers here in Korea in 2020, which were very good." – he said. 

Leandro has played more than 100 matches in South Korea. Having spent time at Seoul E-Land, and Daejeon since 2022 with 27 goals scored and 18 assists overall. When playing for Seoul E-Land, Leandro was involved in 15 goals in 25 appearances, scoring ten goals and assisting five.