{"id":4113,"date":"2024-05-25T18:05:09","date_gmt":"2024-05-25T17:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/?p=4113"},"modified":"2024-05-29T21:23:31","modified_gmt":"2024-05-29T20:23:31","slug":"equal-shot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/2024\/05\/25\/equal-shot\/","title":{"rendered":"<strong>Equal Shot<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"864\" height=\"486\" src=\"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/CAF_Logo_84.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2497\" srcset=\"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/CAF_Logo_84.jpg 864w, https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/CAF_Logo_84-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/CAF_Logo_84-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/CAF_Logo_84-260x146.jpg 260w, https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/CAF_Logo_84-50x28.jpg 50w, https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/CAF_Logo_84-133x75.jpg 133w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>By Satish Sekar \u00a9 Satish Sekar (May 25<sup>th<\/sup> 2024)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Favourites<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Perish the though that Al-Ahly appearing in the final of the flagship competition for African clubs for the fifth consecutive time would satisfy them. Al-Ahly, the team that the Conf\u00e9d\u00e9ration Africaine de Football (CAF) labelled the Club of the Century, face former champions, Taraji, Esp\u00e9rance Sportive de Tunis, in the second leg of the final tonight after a drab 0-0 draw in Rad\u00e8s, Tunisia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yesterday, Marcel Koller, defending the title he steered Al-Ahly to last year, warned his team against complacency. Koller insisted that Esp\u00e9rance have an \u2018equal chance\u2019 of winning the title. \u201cThose who watched the first leg know that the two teams are equally matched,\u201d Koller said. It won&#8217;t be an easy task.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Feeling Their Presence<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Koller appealed to Ahly fans to make their presence felt. \u201cWe need our fans to make Esperance feel like they&#8217;re playing away from home,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But Ahly will be without veteran defender, the Tunisian left-back, Ali Ma\u00e2loul, who has a complete set of club honours, having won the CAF Confederation Cup with his former team, (Club Sportive) CS Sfaxien in 2013 \u2013 he has played for Al-Ahly since 2016, winning the CAF Champions League and CAAF Supercup with the Egyptian giants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite appearing at the press conference yesterday, Mohamed El-Shenawy will have to displace young prodigy Mostafa Shoubir to gain the start tonight \u2013 he didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI&#8217;ve prepared myself and the team for all possible scenarios and we&#8217;re ready to handle whatever comes our way,\u201d Koller told journalists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If Al-Ahly win tonight it will be their 12<sup>th<\/sup> Champions Clubs title, extending their record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Satish Sekar \u00a9 Satish Sekar (May 25th 2024) Favourites Perish the though that Al-Ahly appearing in the final of the flagship competition for African clubs<span class=\"excerpt-hellip\"> [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[713,756,780,779,734,750,781],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4113"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4113"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4117,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4113\/revisions\/4117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}