Not looking so bright without the million dinar man, are we ?

By: Houssem | August 30th, 2008

Yesterday Étoile lost away to algerian side JS Kabylie on the second matchday of the CAF Confederation Cup group stage (a terribly boring 1-0). I don’t think there’s something that really deserves some big ranting, but the team didn’t show enough spirit to win this game. The Kabyles weren’t the better team, but they took advantage from a sloppy clearance by Nafkha and took the lead, to then settle in their half of the pitch and provide us with the most amazing anti-football I’ve seen. You can have a look at the goal here, ~~I’ll include the highlights as soon as they’re available..~~

jsk-etoile du sahel de tunis
Hochgeladen von aglzim

I must say that a lot of people (myself included) were more afraid of what would happen if we won in Tizi-Ouzou – no offense, algerian football fans – than of the idea of coming back to Sousse with no points. JSK has clearly improved since our last encounter two years ago, and having to play without wonderkid Sadat Bukhari aka Boumeliar (referring to his high transfer fee of 1 million TND, 550.000€, a bit more than that when we bought him) can lead to a serious incapacity in the front, and Mehdi Ben Dhifallah didn’t show he was in good shape after losing his first team spot and his place on the National Team roster. His substitute Slim Jedaied didn’t do a lot better (he had a very nice shot from 40m that hit the crossbar), but that leads us back to the issue of having so many unexperienced players for this year’s campaign. We just have to deal with it.

This defeat isn’t tragic at all, we still have plenty of time and 4 games to top the group. Yet we can’t not look back at last year’s Champions League, when winning all our away games during the group stage proved crucial to winning the first place. Things will get better up front when Bukhari gets back from his suspension. Bassem Ben Nasr is improving, and Mejdi Mosrati can prove to be an efficient bench player.

ONE thing I have to mutter about : ART Sport’s egyptian commentator sounded like he had no idea of what was going on on the pitch, and we heard more information about the egyptian ref trio than about any of the two teams. Seriously, if you’re buying the TV rights to every african club competition, at least provide some decent coverage, with people who actually have a clue.