Étoile du Sahel vs. Asante Kotoko preview

By: Houssem | August 16th, 2008

This Sunday will see Étoile begin a new phase of the CAF Confederation Cup : the group stage, and it’s a good thing to start in our home ground of Sousse. Étoile tried to have the game on Saturday, but CAF refused due to TV rights contracts with ART. Asante Kotoko have struggled to secure a win or even a draw against North African clubs in the past years : during the 2006 Champions League Group stage, they lost away to CS Sfaxien (1-2), Al Ahly (0-4) and JS Kabylie (0-1), but they will come to Sousse with the strong winning attitude you would expect from any african team.
Their most dangerous player would be striker Eric Bekoe, who has started his international career a few months ago, and was a potential target for Hertha Berlin before they signed Amine Chermiti. The rest of the team are ghanaian players who haven’t got much international experience.

Sadat Bukhari will be missed in attack, since the red card he got against Espérance de Tunis in the latest qualifying game keeps him out of this one. I doubt Mehdi Ben Dhifallah and Afouène Gharbi will make it, having entered the physical preparation phase only 4 days ago. Ben Dhifallah might make the bench, since his recovery was meant to take a week, but Gharbi will definitely be out (10 days of training before he can make the first team again).

The starting formation might look like this :

With Ben Radhia still recovering, and Yaken not having made the right impression during the first league game against Club Africain, the position of right back might be filled by Mohamed Sacko, who would then be moved from his favorite defensive midfield position. Meriah will have a chance to show if he really has been progressing like we’ve been hearing during the last couple of weeks, and with Felhi back, we won’t have to worry about what happens in our penalty box. In the absence of Bukhari, midfield will have to look experimental again, in order to support Emeka Opara in the best way possible. Tembo Fwayo and Mejdi Mosrati could both be deployed as a second striker. Having them both up front is the only choice we have since we play at home, and 3 points are the only thing we can expect in such a game. But it will also make the job harder for Mida and Nafkha in midfield.

A vey interesting game lies ahead, a game where no mistakes can be made, because winning away in a competition dominated by arab clubs (6 out of the 8 clubs who have made it to the group stage come from Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria and Sudan) can be very tricky, and getting 3 points on your home ground is the most important thing to secure a place in the final.

TV7 can’t show the game on its satellite channel, since ART owns the broadcast rights to every african competition starting from the group stages. The unlucky among us will have to follow the game online. Kick-off is on 19:10 CET. Have fun w nchallah marbou7a !