Mamelodi Sundowns co-coach Rulani Mokwena believes his side are well prepared to face Al Ahly in their Caf Champions League Group A clash, but knows it won’t be easy to beat them in Cairo.
The Brazilians will be hoping to return to winning ways in the Champions League following their goalless draw with Al-Merrikh at the Al Salam Stadium this past Saturday.
Sundowns will now travel to the Cairo International Stadium when they take on former head coach Pitso Mosimane’s Al Ahly side in their third Group A game on Saturday.
The Tshwane giants will go into this encounter atop the Group A standings with four points from two games. Al Ahly are placed second in the group, level on one point with third-placed Al-Hilal and Al-Merrikh in fourth.
“We packed our bags and got ready to head up north to Alexandria where we found a home, a facility that I think where we will probably start adopting a lot more, not just for the Champions League but for pre-season as a camp,” Mokwena told his club’s official website.
“It’s a facility that’s been used by teams like Atletico Madrid, it’s a facility that allows us to get on with the day-to-day runnings that we would normally do even when we are at Chloorkop. Some very good recovery resources are available to us, with therapy pools, hydrotherapy pools, sonars with Himalayan salts, and all these things assist us with regard to ensuring that as much as we work very hard on the pitch, we can also retain the freshness of the players and help the bodies to come back a lot faster.
“We know it’s not going to be easy, but I’m sure the Al-Ahly camp also speaks the same language and they also have an understanding that it’s not going to be an easy game for them.
“It’s very difficult to say, we watched their game [on Tuesday], if you look at their lineup you’re very sure that the two centre backs, maybe apart from Yasser [Ibrahim] in that back four, he’s a predominant starter. They could still have a [Amir] Tawfik to play at right back or a [Mohammed] Hany, they’ve got [Ayman] Ashraf who can play there, they’ve got that left back or he can play left centre half in a back three, they’ve done that quite a bit just before the Club World Cup and going there with the same structure.
“They were very aggressive even in the Club World Cup, once they were 1-0 down, in particular the game against Palmeiras, they started with a back three but they made changes, not through personnel but through moving certain players within the structure and going into a back four that still had a very aggressive and a very narrow midfield, which is something that is consistent as a feature.”
He added: “We are prepared, we know where they are strong, we’ve watched their games and we know that in games like this, preparation also becomes an invisible match because surely there will be a lot of work that goes into preparing for us from the other side.
“Sometimes with the universe, you’ve got to also put yourself in a position where the universe can think about you when it thinks about who to favour, hence the language of work ethic.
“When you sign up for Sundowns one of the most acceptable factors is that you’re going to spend a lot of times away from home. A good thing is that we’ve got a change room full of players that are used to that, very familiar with that also with whose families are very familiar with that because part to you being away and the last thing you need is regular phone calls providing disturbances about what is happening back home. When you look at where our players are, you see smiles on their faces every day and when you look at their eyes there’s a sense of relaxation, a good sense of anticipating.”
