“The reaction at the end tells you everything. A special night for the club in the competition,” said Papastamatis.

“Real credit to the playing group, they worked so hard. Soaked up pressure at times but also looked really dangerous going forward.

“When you play away, it's difficult to get a result. At half-time, we were calm. They (City) had periods with the ball but not in the area that was causing us problems.

“We just wanted to improve the way we went forward with it. We made some pretty good chances, ultimately it's a really impressive win for us.”

Goran Causic’s 86th minute penalty settled the contest but equally impressive was Buriram’s organisation the entire game as they restricted City to only one shot on target to claim their second win in the group.

The result saw the Thai champions remain in third spot in Group H but crucially, only a point behind both Ventforet Kofu and City, with two more rounds of matches to be played.

This was Aurelio Vidmar’s first match at the helm for City in the AFC Champions League after being installed as head coach on November 1 but it wasn’t to be a memorable start with the former Australian international keen to move on.

“It was a battle most of the game, we had a fair bit of the game but we lacked the edge at the front, we didn't create great goal scoring opportunities,” said Vidmar.

“I don't think we deserved to lose, a draw would've been a fair result but it is what it is. Speed bump that we have to get over with.”