I opened my eyes and looked at my alarmclock. The numbers made out a five, a three and a zero. Half five in the morning and I still couldn’t sleep. It was a special day. Tonight at eight I would walk my team onto the pitch in the African Champions League final verus Al-Ahly from Egypt.
We were playing the first leg at our own stadium. Little over a year ago we played Al-Ahly in the group stages of the Champions League. Away from home we lost 1-0 to them. But at home we beat them 4-0. We were already out of the tournament and they already qualified so it would be hard to see how it would go today. I knew my team was ready. We won were still unbeaten in the league and our last two matches we won 8-1 and 9-1 so morale was pretty good.
I spent the day nervous until it was 3 pm. I put on my club costume and took a cab to the stadium. Fan of both MO Constantine and Al-Ahly were already piling up outside of the stadium. It was a sell-out. I didn’t expect my players to come in for another hour, so I took my time to go through the speech I was gonna give them. In the end it must have sounded something like this.
Ok guys, today is a special day for MO Constantine. And you are all gonna be part of it. Not just the player, not just the fans. We’re going out there and win this first leg for everyone at the club. For Fatima and Samira who do the club’s laundry after every match. For Mourad who makes sure everything is ready when we enter the dressing room. For the chairman, the coaches, the physio’s.
I know we’ve beaten Al-Ahly before. But don’t underestimate them. They are a strong team and we know it. Don’t get disheartened when we go down by one goal or two, we’ve done that before and we almost always turn it around. There’s one team that deserves to win this trophy and it is us. But if we don’t, we’ll try again and again until we win it.
My players cheered. We walked out onto the pitch past the trophy. The fans were going wild. We felt unbeatable.
Let’s hope this one is ours next week #AllezLeMOC #CAFChampionsLeague #MOCAHL
We started out great, twelve minutes into the match Otman Djellilahine sent us 1-0 up, five minutes later Hichem Mokthar converted a penalty after Islam Tatem was fouled inside the box. We were sitting on roses, but right before half time Abdel Khattab pulled one back from a corner.
I told my team they were doing fine. We were 2-1 up and if we could score another goal we would have a good result to build on in Caïro next week.
We did get our goal. With some help. A cross by Bilal Ouali got stuck in the goal mouth. There was a scrimmage. It looked a lot like a rugby try. In the end it was Abdel Khattab who tucked the ball behind his own goalkeeper. We were 3-1 up. To make things better Bilal scored the 4-1 at the hour mark. A result that stayed on the scoreboard until the final whistle.
We won the first leg of this final. But would it be enough for next week?
Derk's Football Manager Story 