Sydney FC remain in contention for an Asian Champions League quarter-final berth, despite an Ufuk Talay penalty miss leaving the Blues with a 0-0 draw against Shanghai Shenhua at Aussie Stadium.

Group E challengers Urawa Reds and Persik Kediri played out a 3-3 draw in Indonesia, meaning Sydney will progress into the last eight of Asia's premier club competition if they beat Urawa in Japan on May 23.

A draw will be enough for Urawa, however, to progress.

Sydney were dominant from start to finish, but wasted a litany of chances in front of 14,786 disappointed fans.

The A-League glamour club were gifted a controversial penalty in the 24th minute, when Zhiqing Liu was ruled to have handballed inside the 18-yard box, only for replays to show he was about a metre outside the area.

Justice prevailed when Talay's spot-kick crashed into the crossbar and back into the field of play.

Strike duo Alex Brosque and David Zdrilic, playmaker David Carney and captain Mark Rudan all found themselves in scoring positions time and again but failed to find that killer blow.

Brosque, in particular, had a tap-in blocked, a point plank shot saved and flashed a shot across the face of goal when he found himself free down the left.

Rudan's chances came late in the game, where he had a long shot saved and bobbled a header over the bar.

Shanghai 'keeper Chen Zhang kept the Chinese in it with an array of fine saves.

The visitors' only clear chance came in the 77th minute when Uruguayan midfielder Fernando Correa rose well, only to see his header cleared by Carney off the line.

Sydney played a fast-paced, attacking brand of football from the opening minute without luck.

In the eighth minute, veteran midfielder Steve Corica shot from long range and had his short parried and the ensuing corner resulted in another good save from Zhang, this time from the head of Carney.

Nocolai Topor-Stanley's header flashed wide a minute later.

The match threatened to turn into a farce as a number of Shanghai players went to ground easily, twice asking for stretchers only to hop off and jog back on the field within seconds.

Robbie Middleby picked up a yellow card in the process and will miss the trip to Japan.

Rudan and Talay were also cautioned.

Japanese glamour club Urawa remain on top of Group E on nine points, one clear of Sydney on eight and Persik Kediri are out of the running on seven.

If Sydney won on Wednesday, they would only have needed to draw with the red Diamonds in two week's time to progress to the knock-out phase, but now they face the difficult task of taking all three points away from home.

"When we go to Saitama we will be forced to play our normal game and that is to attack," Sydney coach Branko Culina said.

"It's going to be a tough task, because you're talking about winning in front of 62,000 very patriotic Urawa Reds fans."

Culina was disappointed with the finishing of his men.

"We were all over them. It's fair to say that Shanghai were probably quite happy to sit back and defend. It was always going to be hard.

"When you miss a penalty you're up against it."

And while the Sydney boss evaded questions regarding Shanghai's diving tactics which slowed the play, Carney voiced his disapproval.

"They came here for a draw, but there are other ways to go about doing that," he said.

Shanghai coach Osvaldo Gimenez denied the tactic was one of his orders and agreed it was a negative way to play the game.

"No, it's something I don't appreciate," Gimenez said.

"It's a habit of theirs (the players).

"Of course, in Chinese football it's a habit when a player falls to dive. It's a custom of theirs to do that."

Brought to you by AAP © 2024 AAP