How Pirates can overcome Al Ahly - Jele

Former Orlando Pirates captain Happy Jele took a trip down memory lane ahead of the headliner in the CAF Champions League between the Buccaneers and Al Ahly set to be played at the Orlando Stadium on Saturday afternoon.

Kick-off is at 15:00 CAT (SA, GMT+2)

It will be the first time since the 2013 CAF Champions League final that the two sides meet in the competition. The two-legged final saw the Egyptian Red Devils seal a 3-1 victory on aggregate.

Jele took the time to reflect on his journey through that campaign and how the current Pirates squad can grab a positive result against Al Ahly.

“The most important thing for me is to be in the final with the big guns, Al Ahly is a big team. They always compete in Africa,” the former Pirates skipper said in an interview with SuperSport.com.

“To be in the final that time, it was a great feeling playing against Al Ahly at the time. It showed that I’m capable of playing with the big teams, great players. For me, it was the best moment of my career.

He went on to describe how the experience was for him to play in the final against the Egyptian powerhouse team and how the current Pirates team can navigate this encounter.

“At that time we were still young but because of the togetherness that we had, we had one goal to achieve it,” Jele continued.

“If you look at the 1995 win, they won the cup so everyone was talking about it and we wanted to beat that record.

“Orlando Pirates will have a difficult game but I’m hoping because we’re starting at home, the stats say we’ve beat them more than they’ve beat us.

“Remember, we beat them in the Confederations Cup and the Champions League, home and away. So the stats show that we are the big team at this point in time but obviously on paper, the guys need to go on the field and replicate it,” he added.

© Thando Mpembe