Al Ahly players are set to be rewarded by the club should they manage to beat Morocco’s Raja Club Athletic in the second leg of the quarter-finals of the CAF Champions League, scheduled for Friday.
The club’s management was keen to encourage the players to sharpen their enthusiasm and push them to present strong performance against the Moroccan team, especially as the management realizes the difficulty of confronting the competitor’s desire to compensate for its loss with two goals to one in the first round, as well as betting on the huge fans who will attend the meeting to support the players.
Mahmoud Al-Khatib, Head of Al Ahly, held a session with the team members inside the residence hotel in Morocco, asking them to focus on the field and avoid provocations that might occur and cause expulsions.
Al Ahly will hold its final training on Thursday evening in Casablanca. Pitso Mosimane, the coach of Al Ahly, will focus during the training on reviewing the team’s plan in the next match. The team will watch recordings of the first leg and a number of previous matches of the Moroccan team to settle on the plan that the team will play in. Mosimane also dedicated a training session that the players perform on a daily basis to train them to score from various angles, with the aim of treating the crisis of wasted opportunities that haunt the team, while Ali Maaloul, the team’s left back, is subjected to a medical test today to determine his condition in terms of the injury he suffered severely in the connective muscle, to determine his position on catching up with tomorrow’s confrontation.
Al Ahly’s squad, which Mosimane chose to travel to Morocco, included Mohamed El-Shennawy, Ali Lotfy, Mustafa Schuber, Mohamed Hani, Karim Fouad, Mohamed Abdel-Moneim, Mahmoud Metwally, Yasser Ibrahim, Ayman Ashraf, Ali Maaloul, Mahmoud Wahid, Amr Al-Sulayya, Aliou Diang, Hamdi Fathi, Mohamed Mahmoud, Hussein El-Shahat, Salah Mohsen, Mohamed Magdy Afsha, Mohamed Taher, Louis Michisoni, Ahmed Abdelkader, Walid Suleiman, Hossam Hassan, Mohamed Sherif, and Percy Tau.
Al Ahly sent a letter to the Confederation of African Football asking it to pay attention to the match and all the data around it in accordance with the regulations of the International Federation, and to ensure the safety of the two teams and achieve arbitral justice.
In another matter, Al Ahly’s technical committee set the priorities of the deals that will be contracted in the summer transfers, in preparation for the new season. The centre of the frank striker came at the forefront of the committee’s priorities, in coordination with the technical staff of the team, as the committee wants to strengthen this centre to save the team that clearly suffered during its African trek from the absence of offensive effectiveness, which prompted the club’s technical committee to submit a recommendation to the administration that it be the first deal it concludes.
On the other hand, Raja, led by Rachid Tousi, continued its closed training camp, in preparation for the match that will be held at Mohammed V Stadium.
Moroccan newspapers were interested in the upcoming match between Al Ahly and Raja. The Moroccan newspaper, Hespress, highlighted the Al Ahly’s attempts to quench sedition between the fans of both clubs, emphasizing the strong relationship between Egypt and Morocco.
The newspaper talked about the letter that Al Ahly sent to the Confederation of African Football before the two teams’ match, in which it explained that there are parties that are trying to spread overcharging through social media sites to abuse the relationship between the two clubs, stressing that it respects the distinguished relationship.
Al Ahly called on CAF to pay attention to the match, and all the data about it, in accordance with the regulations of the International Federation of the Game, and to ensure the safety of the two teams and achieve arbitral justice.
The famous Moroccan sports website 360 highlighted the fact that the board of directors of Raja Club prevented coach Rachid Taousi from making any statements until the date of the Al-Ahly match, except for the official statements in the press conference of the Confederation of African Football before the match.
Officials from the director’s office of Raja Sports asked Rashid to focus on the match that will bring the green team together with its Egyptian guest, Al Ahly, and to reduce media statements before the match.
A source close to Raja Sports revealed that Raja officials formally informed Rashid not to make any statements before the match, except for those stipulated by CAF, which obliges him to attend the press conference before and after any match accompanied by one of his players.
Al-Raja fans criticized Rashid Al-Tausi because of his media interviews that preceded Al-Ahly’s confrontation last week, and considered them “unacceptable” and demanded that he focus more on the match, and not talk about its details before its end.
