Al Ahly head coach Marcel Koller says the exploits of Pitso Mosimane are in the past as he dodged the question about replicating his formula of success.
Whether it was avoided or lost in translation, Koller was not keen to address what happened prior to his arrival at the record 10-time CAF Champions League winners – who need a positive result against Mamelodi Sundowns on Saturday.
Mosimane reached three consecutive CAFCL finals and won the first two before leaving the club and his successor Ricardo Soares went on to attempt to implement a fluid attacking system that backfired, which ended his stint after just 17 games.
“I cannot judge what happened before [I was appointed] but I know that we have improved a lot since I took the job six months ago,” Koller said when asked by iDiski Times if he’s taken note of how Mosimane won his titles with the club in the competition.
“And we’re going to improve more and more, we’ve shown good performances in the FIFA Club World Cup, the Egyptian Premier League – and in the game against Sundowns, we played well but it wasn’t satisfying in terms of the result.”
The former Austria head coach was, however, confident they will secure three points to take home to Cairo.
“It will be a tough game for us, but we know we’ve prepared very well and that we’re very good, and we showed this in the first game,” Koller added.
“We are full of self-confidence that we can come away with a good result [from Loftus].”
Captain Mohammed El Shenawy echoed the sentiments of his coach, as they target to draw level with Sundowns on seven points.
“You know it’s going to be a difficult game for us but we showed in the first game but we didn’t have a lot of luck in Cairo,” he stated. “But we’re sure that we’re going to win tomorrow.”
Sundowns host the Red Devils at Loftus Verseld on Saturday afternoon at 15h00.
