Pitso Mosimane admits his Al Ahly side have been heavily depleted by their travels towards the CAF Champions League final this season after labouring to another draw.
Ahly dropped points for a fourth consecutive league outing with the 0-0 draw against the National Bank of Ahly at the Arab Contractors Stadium in Cairo on Wednesday evening.
Despite having 65% possession and 17 shots at goal it was another frustrating evening as they sit in third place, seven points behind league leaders Zamalek – but with four games in hand over the champions.
“Our responsibility is to try and win everything we play for and obviously when you come from a trip that takes seven hours in all, where you have one hour travel to the airport, to be two hours there before the flight, because international flights requires two hours before,” Mosimane said after the game in the post-match press conference.
“Then you fly four hours and arrive 7am in the morning, so you spend almost seven hours in the whole [trip] and land in the morning before one day to rest, half a day then you have to play [a league game], you are bound to have players with discomfort and some players ruled out.”
Mosimane denied the notion that their domestic struggles have been due to a lack of effective rotation of the first-team squad and laughed off suggestions that he should have fielded a weaker squad against ES Setif in Algiers when they took a 4-0 lead into the second leg semi-final last Saturday.
“You can see [Ahmed] Abdelkader also didn’t give us much, it’s part of the game and we can’t make excuses, it’s part of our lives and you play against those waiting for you on the pitch rested, you have to try and do what you have to do,” he continued.
“But also be honest, the opponents missed two chances, but we had ours, of the two [Mohamed] Sherif should have scored one. So if you don’t take your chances… but we tried. We keep pushing and pushing.
“We didn’t take El-Shenaway out because we want to experiment, we want to check… he’s injured. I’m not sure what, the doctor will give the update. So when you have El-Shenaway injured, Maaloul with discomfort, I have Dieng, Hamdy and El-Solia out and Taher says he’s tired – what am I going to do?
“I tried to refresh the team and started Sherif, [Mahmoud] Wahid who played very well. Afsha, [Rami] Rabia, five changes to refresh the team but we couldn’t win.
“I can’t gamble in semi-finals. I must gamble in the semi-finals? No, no, no. And then when I come back with a 5-4 what are you going to say to me? We’ve put Afsha, Sherif, Kouka, Rami Rabia, Ayman Ashraf, did you forget?”
The Red Devils face ENPII and relegation favourites Eastern Company over the next six days in the league before the Champions League final against Wydad in Casablanca on Monday, 30 May.
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