I'll start my update with the ACC. We drew Club Africain of Tunisia in the semi finals - a quick look through thir team sheet seemed to indicate they were marginally better on paper. We went behind twice in the first leg but equalied both times, the second equaliser coming in the 92nd minute. With the first leg being at home we had to win the away leg or score a lot of goals. When Club Africain scored after 4 mins in the second leg we looked down and out. A 30th minute equalier by Uduor levelled the tie but left us still behind on away goals befoe Kouma popped up in the 72nd minute to score what turned out to be the winner. We were of to our first final!!
Our final opponents were Kaizer Chiefs, a team we had both won and lost to in the group stages. The final was two legged and we were playing away first. Things got off to a great start when we took the lead through an own goal after 23 mins. I let the team go after a second until about the 60 minute mark to try and take a firm grip on the tie. As the game went on we dropped deeper and deeper tryig to protect our slender advantage and were eventually punished as the equaliser came in the 81st minute. Unfortunately we got sloppy and conceded again - a 91st minute strike from Sadomba meaning we had an away goal to take into the second leg but crucially Kaizer Chiefs had the lead.
The second leg was a hard fought match with both teams defending well. With the scoreline still goalless after 65 mins i threw on a second striker to try and get the goal that would clinch the trophy. Then with 13 mins left a clearance by the Chiefs fell to my LB Fatai near the halfway line. His short pass infield found Diallo who from 30 yards out took one touch before blasting a bulet into the top corner!! Peters was swiftly withdrawn for a DM who was given strict instructions to jut sit in front of the back four. I needn't have worried. The Chiefs didn't threaten again and the final whistle blew to begin the celebrations!!
With the trophy came a nice £396k paycheck so the clubs financial worries have receded. In the challenge cup we yet again bottled it against lower league opposition going down 1-0 in the third round.
The news from the league was better though as a couple of away defeats aside we've performed admirably. With 1 point seperating us and Enyimba and Enyimba to play us at home in the second half of the season there's plenty of reasons to be optimistic. An 8 point cushion to 3rd will be handy in the race for ACL qualification too.
As a result of our ACC win we got entered into the Super Cup aginst ACL winners Zamalek. This would be a chance for me to test our team against the continents bes and see how we fared. The game was a goal fest but with Zamalek always in control eventually winning 5-3. I'm ok with that - we were playing in Egypt and had an attacking line up and in the end our defence let us down. One of the benefits of this game though was playin in front of 70,000 fans in Cairo which meant I got to see this when I checked ou finances after the game:
That will definitely come in handy!!
In the league we had good but not great form. Enyimba seemed to match us for results, whenever we dropped points so did they so not much has changed league wise. Our defence is falling apart - a great example is our last game against Heartland. Take a 2-0 lead into half time, encourage the team and by 50 mins the scores were level again. We scored again but some poor marking from a corner meant another goal conceded and two dropped points.
Our 4th place finish last year qualified us for the ACC again and we drew South African side FS Stars in the preliminary round. We were down 2-0 at one point but pulled it back to 2-2 to keep us in with a shout in the away leg.
So with another season in the books lets have a look at how the season finished.
In the return leg of the ACC prelim round we completely crumbled getting smoked 4-1. Needless to say i wasnt too happy!!
However my exploits over the last season seems to have woken bigger clubs to my talent. I got linked with a series of bottom half clubs in South Africa
I declined to comment, not wanting to get caught up in the media storm. A few weeks later another club went one step further
My heart lept when I saw Santos but it was only the South African side with the same name. After taing a look at their squad and infrastructure i decided it wasnt worth it. If I was going to move it had to be to a club that was already equipped to challenge at continental level.
The end of my own season was fairly dull. Enyimba didn't slip up again an i was comfortably in 2nd so with nothing to play for I took a holiday and let the assistant manager finish the last few games.
With ACL qualification in the bag I could look forward to next season......or so I thought.
After 116 goals in 146 appearances for the club my star striker finally got itchy feet. I dont like unhappy players at my clubs especially in smaller close knit teams as it can really mess the team up. However I slapped a 500k price tag on him - having received 350k offers earlier in the season I think I might be able to get it.
Well its been coming but finally this came through the inbox:
Given the loss of Peters i think this is a good time to move and this looks perfect. Masr finished 2nd in the Egyptian League so I'll be walking straight into another club that are competing on a continental level but this time with some finances to back me up.
I'll report back once I've got a feel for my new squad!
After a good look through the squad I have to say i'm pretty happy - the team has a great midfield and a decent attack
The defence is quite weak and will be somewhere I'll be looking to improve before the season starts. A new goalkeeper would be useful too but not essential. I may go back and raid my old club for their young fullbacks which were very promising.
I've also done a complete overhaul of the staff but seem to be struggling to get a good fitness coach
Preseason is over and the team look impressive. I managed to strengthen almost every area I targeted except GK. Two of my signings, Kouma and Kuffour were from my last club Bussdor. I wanted Buffour, a very promising left back but he chose to move elsewhere.
The two best players I picked up were:
Djarrar in particular I have high hopes for after he scored 4 goals and assisted the 5th on his debut in an ACC cup game!
Heres a breakdown of my transfers:
Our pre season was very good - going undefeated despite me leaving the assistant manager in charge for the friendlies. We also succesfully navigated the 3rd round of the ACC beating CO Bamako 7-0 on aggregate. I'm pretty confident this team can do great things and I seriously believe we can win the Champions League at the first attempt.
Congrats on the new job mate. Djarrar looks a good talent, he might need to work on his composure though! haha
Good luck this season mate
I learnt a valuable lesson today - always read the league rules!! it turns out in Egypt you can only have three foreign players in the matchday squad. If I wanted to pick my first choice team I'd have 10!!
This creates a bit of a problem as both my first choice wingers, Djarrar and one of my best centre mids were all foreign. I had better cover up front so decided Djarrar would be the one to miss out but to compensate would play every continental game.
This created an additional problem in that a lot of the players I brought in were too late for the continental squad deadline so were unregistered. This means I now have the juggling act of keeping these players happy as I can only play them every now and again.
Oops!!
PS On a bright note Djarrar is an absolute beast. Started the season with 12 goals in 6 appearances!!
Halfway through the season and I'm not quite sure what to make of it!!
We got dumped out of the cup in the first round after a home defeat by Zamalek which was disappointing. In the ACC we scored 16 goals but shipped 14 goals in the 6 group games ending with a disappointing 3rd place finish in the group.
In the league we have been right up with the title race the entire season but a little wobble in the last few games has put us five points off top. There dont seem to be any glaring problems with the team, we just seem to take our eye off the ball at crucial times!
Juggling the foreign players is proving tricky and three of them have already come to me saying they are unhappy. I decided the ones that want to go can go and i'll use the funds to bring in some Egyptian players. One of my foreign players Tran - probably my player of the season so far (21 games 12 goals 10 assists) is getting major interest from Europe and if a multi million pound offer comes in i wont stand in his way.
After christmas our focus turns towards the upcoming Champions League campaign. this of course is the one I really want so the league will take a bit of a back seat when that begins.
What a journey! Keep going mate
Turns out my new team are the Man City of Egypt!! Was wondering how they had so much cash for an African side but as I went shopping for Egyptian players and the bank balance dipped below £18m the chairman pumped another £7.5m into the club.
On the pitch we have safely navigated the Champions League preliminary round, disposing of Tonnere FC 11-0 on aggregate. The home leg featured two hat-tricks!! We now face Nchanga Rangers of Zambia in the first round.
With 6 games left to go the title race is pretty much over - despite going on a 7 game winning streak in the league we didnt make up a single point on Zamalek who have won 27 out of their last 30 points. Really frustrating!! My league focus has now switched to ensuring we qualify for the ACL again next season
On the continental front we're doing well, leading Nchanga 5-0 after the first leg so i'm pretty confident of progression. Special mention should go to Djarrar who has scored a whopping 19 goals in 9 continental games and 24 goals in 18 apps overall! His average rating is a massive 8.01 This boy looks a real prospect and when I move on I'll probably take him with me.
I don't know what it is about this save but all my teams seem to bottle it when it comes down to the crunch. This years effort saw us take 4 points from 12 in our last four games after taking 30 from 33 in our previous 11. This end of season blip cost us a spot in the ACL for next season as we ended up finishing an undeserved third. I'm partly responsible for this - we lost a lot of ground early on when we had the foreigner problem and once that was resolved we racked up the points. Either way it puts a lot of pressure on our current ACL campaign as I really want to get this challenge up and running.
Our current ACL campaign is going well. We've qualified for the group stages with a record of played 6 won 6 scored 25 conceded 1. With Zamalek out already theres no teams left I fear though the Morroccan and Tunisian teams may be a threat.
There have been sparkling performance from a lot of players. My RB Sobhy has been a rock, my CB Awad has chipped in with 10 goals from set pieces, my RW Tran has scored 16 and assisted 20 but the undoubted star has been Djarrar
An impressive goal ratio especially in continental competition has seen a £1.4m offer tabled for him already.
I cant really do too much work with the squad over the summer due to being in the middle of the ACL - i'm not sure if I get the chance to amend the squad and dont want to take the risk. I will however keep my eye out for any promising egyptian talent!!
Well as I said I didnt want to do too much work to the squad as I wasnt sure if I could change the ACL squad again before the season started. As it turned out I did get the chance to change it but I was happy enough with the squad I had. In all up till October I only made one signing, bringing in a DM on a free.
The season itself got off to a great start as we coasted through the group stages of the ACL in pre-season and went undefeated in our friendlies. We qualified for the ACL semis as group winners and got drawn against Egyptian side Ismaily who I was confident of beating after our games against them last season.
The qualification seem to have sparked interest from abroad and I received this approach from Europe
It was an interesting opportunity but I felt it would be a distraction on this save so passed it up.
In the league we have been in great form, undefeated in 8 and lying in second with a game in hand on first. Win the game in hand and we go top
In the ACL we won the home leg against Ismaily 2-1 which left the tie on a knife edge. We needed a good start in the second leg to take control of the tie and we got it, Tran sliding home after 8 mins. From there we didnt look back winning the second leg 4-1 to take our place in the ACL final!!
We face Raja Casablanca in the final who look like a good outfit so we will need to be on our game. The first of my pre game targets is now within touching distance!!
Entering the first leg of the champpions league final there was both good news and bad news. The good news is we were currently on a 10 match win streak, and 16 games unbeaten. The bad news is I was playing without my main threats from midfield with Tran, Mostafa, Nyaenda and Jotamo all out.
We were up against an old player of mine - Prince Quartey who was very promising when I had him as a 17 year old at Bussdor and looked to be fulfiling his potential with Raja.
We didnt get off to the best of starts and struggled to find our passing rhythm. Quarteys run at the heart of our defence on 10 mins caused panic in the defence and his laid off pass to Amrani allowed him to cross to an unmarked Hassan at the back post to put Raja 1 up. This seemed to wake us up and 9 mins later the scores were level, Mohamed's cross finding Djarrar in the centre of the area who tucked it under the keeper. A comical own goal followed as one of my central defenders was tackled in the penalty area. Nothing looked on for the Raja player but his shot from a narrow angle was diverted into his own net by my goalkeeper Sattar.
Once again Raja failed to hold onto a lead for more then ten minutes, this time an Omar cross to R Youssef was expertly controlled and a lovely finish into the top corner tied the game up again. Going in at half time at 2-2 felt like a win as we hadnt played great but couldnt complain at 2 away goals.
After a rocket up the backside I sent my players back out and the talk worked as 10 mins into the half we took the lead. R Youssefs mazy run was halted ny Lachaab, injuring R Youssef in the process. The ball ran for Djarrar who coolly slotted into the bottom corner from outside the area. I pulled my team back prepared to defend the 3 away goals but I neednt have worried. 7 minutes later Raja were a man down as Lachaab picked up a second yellow and we were able to coast to the end of the game.
We didnt play particularly well but came away with an away win and 3 away goals. I'm pretty confident we can see this out from here and I can claim my first Champions League crown!!
You are reading "Champions League Dream".
