Defending Caf Champions League champions Al Ahly will be at Orlando Stadium playing their hosts Orlando Pirates in Group C's outing.
The Egyptians have struggled to get wins in South Africa explaining why the Sea Robbers come into the encounter as favourites. While the Club of the Century has played just eight games across all competitions, Bucs have been engaged 18 times.
In their opening pool game, the Egyptian champions defeated Stade d'Abidjan 4-2 while the Sea Robbers claimed a 2-1 victory away against CR Belouizdad.
Kohler determined to beat Pirates
The Red Devils coach Marcel Kohler believes his team can silence the recently crowned MTN champions by getting maximum points.
“It's right. We haven’t played a lot of games as Pirates, but it may be an advantage for us because we are fresh and maybe they are tired and we can also look at it like this,” he told the media ahead of the game.
“Al Ahly have never won here but. But now may be the right moment to win the game and we prepared our players to end this streak and win maybe when we meet each other tomorrow after the game, we will talk about it again.”
El Shenawy unfazed by Orlando crowd
Meanwhile, goalkeeper and captain Mohamed El Shenawy does not feel the sold-out crowd will impact how they play against the hosts.
“It’s really different to play outside the stadium of Al Ahly in Cairo, we are very happy when we play there also for the supporters from the stadium offer us massive support and we know that tomorrow [Saturday] also it will also be packed with Pirates fans,” the custodian stated.
“But it’s no different for us, we are Al Ahly. We have a lot of experience with such situations and in the end, it’s 11 players against 11 players, so it’s not a matter of having many supporters.
“We have a lot of experience, we have a lot of respect for this and our hope is just to take home the three points from here.”
The game will be played from 15.00 hours South African Time.
