Durban City Fires Back At Al Ahli Claims!

Farook Kadodia responds to reports that the club will play both games away to Al Ahli Tripoli

Durban City is expected to play both home and away matches against Al Ahli Tripoli in Libya, but City boss Farook Kadodia states that the arrangement is not yet finalised.

The KwaZulu-Natal team is in the group phase of the CAF Confederation Cup and is placed in arguably the group of death alongside Al Ahli Tripoli, Morocco’s AS FAR, as well as the Tanzanian outfit, Azam. They are in Group B.

Eric Tinkler’s men will travel to Morocco for Matchday one towards the end of November, before hosting Azam early in December.

They will then host Al Ahli Tripoli around mid-December, with the return leg set for early January next year. Al Ahli Tripoli have reportedly announced that their back-to-back matches against Durban City will both be played in Libya.

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Kadodia has now responded and tells Soccer Laduma that it’s true that the club is strongly considering playing both games at the Tripoli International Stadium. However, he insisted that the Libyans jumped the gun announcing it.

“It’s all premature stories they’re making,” Kadodia told the Siya crew.

“The thing is that they made a proposal to us. We haven’t even thought about it. So, I don’t know exactly why they’re getting so excited about this. If anything is done or anything in between, we’ll tell you. It’s premature, yes. We can’t comment on it,” he stated.

“But yes, I want to consider it simply because I want to see what the benefits are first and whether my team is geared up for it. If my team is geared up for it and we are going to fight to win in all the games, then it’s important. But also, we’ve got to consider the fact that we’ve got our league games, which are our bread and butter, you know.

“So, the thing is that we are in a tough group. I think it’s the toughest group, in all. And the biggest challenge we have is that we’ve got to protect our PSL status,” continued Kadodia.

“So it’s something that we seriously have to weigh the options to see exactly what my players feel and how they feel, and then I can talk further. I’ll get to a decision maybe at the latest by the weekend because CAF doesn’t allow you a lot of time to come up with these kinds of decisions. They want to set the fixtures now.”

The Libyan club is home to South Africa’s Fagrie Lakay and DRC Congo forward Fiston Mayele, amongst others.

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