Al Ahly ready to end their South African hoodoo

In 15 matches against South African opposition, Ahly have never beaten a Premier Soccer League team away since their first game against Mamelodi Sundowns in 2001.

The record reads eight losses and seven draws for the record 11 times champions.

But Koller says there’s always a first time, and this Group C clash presents that opportunity.

"It's right, we don't play a lot of games as Orlando but it may be an advantage for us because we are fresh and we are maybe fire. You are right Al Ahly never wins here but now may be the right moment to win the game and we prepared our players to win," Koller said.

READ: State and embattled SAFA President Danny Jordaan file counter applications

With the game expected to be played in the scorching heat of 35 Degrees Celsius, and Ahly coming from a cold Egyptian winter.

In preparing the team for the summer season in SA, Ahly have been training at 3pm in their last few training sessions, and Koller is not bothered by the weather conditions.

"We are happy to be here and to play tomorrow [Saturday] as I told you and in Cairo it's now cold and our players know the weather here and we enjoy the weather and for the game tomorrow, we are happy and we don't have problems to play at that time of the day," he added.

The Al Ahly camp has also been boosted by the availability of The Pharaoh’s star player Emam Ashour, whose crisis with the club's captain, Mohamed El-Shennawy recently ended, and he returned to training this week.

Ashour had expressed his anger at not participating in the Stade d’Abidjan match last week, and quarreled with El-Shennawy, Koller, and sports director Mohamed Ramadan. Koller confirmed Ashour’s availability after apologising to El-Shennawy.

"Emam Shour is with us and he trained with us yesterday, the atmosphere is very good in the team. He is one of the best players in our squad and I don't know if I can tell you now if he starts tomorrow or not but every player in our team is concentrating on the game tomorrow."