Junior Ajayi has been crowned Egypt Premier League champion three times since joining Al Ahly in 2016 and he could be on course for his fourth league crown by the end of this season.
In another boost to Al Ahly’s title defence, the Nadi El Qarn – which translates to Club of the Century in English – defeated high flying Pyramids FC 2-1 in a league game during the week.
Al Ahly have now gone 13 games and 13 wins in the league, seven points separating them from second placed Arab Contractors.
Ajayi played 90 minutes in that game in what the Nigerian’s 12th league appearance this campaign.
But the priority silverware, alongside all others, for the him and his teammates will be the CAF Champions League.
Although they are the most successful club in the competition’s history, with 8 Champions League titles to their name, Ahly Ahly have not won the competition since 2013.
Ajayi missed out on hoisting the trophy in 2017 and 2018, when Al Ahly finished as runners-up. They lost to Wydad Casablanca and Esperance de Tunis respectively.
This season they have the chance to expunge those ghosts and go all the way, but first they must deal with South Africa’s Mamelodi Sundowns in the last eight.
Last time both sides met at this stage of the competition, the PSL side handed Al Ahly a thrashing before knocking them out.
A comfortable, but shocking 5-0 win in the first-leg tie at the Lucas Masterpieces Moripe Stadium had pretty much don the job for Pitso Mosimane’s men, because they lost 1-0 in Cairo to go through eventually 5-1 on aggregate.
With the memories of that humiliation still hanging in the air for Al Ahly, the ‘surrealness’ no longer exists for Mosimane.
The 2016 Champions League winner admits it will be difficult to replicate the 2019 quarter-final result again.
“We’re going to face the Club of the Century and it’s not going to be easy for us. We expect them to play strong against us to rectify last year’s result,” H/T Kingfut Mosimane told Sada El-Balad TV channel.
“That scoreline happened once in history and it will never happen again. I don’t know if Al Ahly ever lost a Champions League match 5-0. It will never happen again because Al Ahly won’t allow Mamelodi Sundowns to score five goals against them. ”
“Al Ahly are a strong side but we will do our best to beat them. We play different football from teams in Egypt and North Africa, we play more short passes and there’s a lot of movements.
“And a lot of times it’s very difficult for North African teams to play against us,” he concluded.
The quarter-final fixtures in the Champions League get underway late in February, the first-leg between Al Ahly and Sundowns will hold February 28 at the Al Salam Stadium.
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