Eric Tinkler clearly spoke too early. After his team’s 1-0 Caf Confederation Cup semi-final, first leg defeat of Al Ahly, the Orlando Pirates coach waxed lyrical about Zamalek being the “favourites” to win Africa’s second tier competition.
But it is highly unlikely to be the White Knights the Buccaneers will face in the final should Tinkler’s men overcome Ahly in Suez this weekend. It is rather Tunisia’s Etoile du Sahel, who produced a shock result of epic proportions on Sunday, that Pirates may have to overcome to add a second continental title to their cabinet.
Etoile’s 5-1 mauling of Zamalek was the greatest upset in the competition’s 12-year history and it will take a miracle for the Egyptian double champions to overcome the deficit in the second leg in Cairo on Saturday.
Yet having put four past Pirates in their final group match before the semi-finals, Zamalek will fancy themselves to doing the same against the Tunisian Red Devils. That appears highly unlikely though and no doubt Tinkler will now sing a different tune about an Etoile outfit he seemed to rate below the two Egyptian sides.
“Etoile are a very strong team,” he said on Saturday night. “But they are not a team that’s very offensive. They defend well, hit you on the counter-attack and score a lot from set-pieces.”
Surely a non-offensive team would not have been able to put five against a Zamalek team that were “favourites for this cup”?
But before they can take on the Tunisians, there is the small matter of defending their first leg lead, if not adding to it, so they can overcome an Ahly side that is confident they can turn things around.
“We lost to Zamalek (last Tuesday) and to Orlando tonight because the players were not in a good state. But that’s how football is, even Barcelona lost 4-1 (to Celta Vigo),” said Ahly coach Fathy Mabrouk. “We talked about the importance of holding on to the ball because Orlando can punish you on the wings.
“We learnt from our mistakes and we will do our best in the second match. We have players who can score goals, so that is not going to be a problem for us going forward.”
And while he has no intentions of going to Suez to sit back and try to defend Thamsanqa Gabuza’s strike, Tinkler is hoping to punish Ahly on the break.
“They need to come at us,” he said.
“And when they do that they will leave themselves exposed (at the back). When they come at us we need to capitalise on that and punish them. We had opportunities to do so here on the counter in the second half but we did not use them.”
Perhaps letting his team watch the tape of Etoile’s demolition of Zamalek would help Tinkler explain to his players what it is he expects of them.
In any case, the exercise might come in handy with the Tunisians appearing the most likely opposition for the final. - The Star