Al Ahly head coach Pitso Mosimane says Percy Tau’s goal would have stood if Video Assistant Refereeing was used in the CAF Champions League group stage.
Ahly suffered their first home defeat in the competition since 2016, which coincides with Sundowns’ first-ever win in Cairo against the record ten-time African champions.
While Mosimane congratulated Sundowns for their hard-fought victory in which Thapelo Morena scored the only goal of the game, he questioned his side’s lack of cutting edge and the absence of VAR.
“Of course, we’re feeling very sad, against for me… it’s a match I didn’t want to lose, but it’s part of the game, these things happen in football,” he said in the post-match press conference.
“I can’t blame the team, we tried so much and got so many opportunities to score and I always knew if the danger come it would be a counter attack because we had numbers on the other side, my midfield went out.
“It happens in football, you learnt the hard way and puts us in a difficult position now where we need to qualify the hardest way. So I think we have to do it the hardest way.
“Congratulations to Mamelodi Sundowns. But when you put pressure, pressure and pressure, one mistake, one chance you do that and they will score.”
He continued: “But I will always ask for CAF to give us VAR because I mean, the goalkeeper handled the ball outside the box and the goal of Percy Tau in my opinion was not offside.
“It’s not offside, he scored a goal, that’s when you need the VAR to clear things up. But we not blaming VAR that we lost, we had many opportunities to score and we didn’t.”
Ahly returns to league action this week against Pharco before hosting second-placed Group A side Al-Merrikh at the Al Ahly Stadium in Al Salam City next Saturday.
