April 20, 2016
Caf Confederations Cup, 2nd round
Return leg: SC Villa vs. FUS Rabat (Rabat lead 7-0 from first leg)
Mandela National Stadium, Namboole
It would be foolhardy of anyone to bet on SC Villa overturning a 7-0 humiliation at the hands of Morocco’s Fus Rabat when the two meet in the return leg of the Caf Confederations Cup second round on Wednesday at Namboole.
Even the Jogoos coach, Ibrahim Kirya, knows it is almost practically impossible. “To be honest I’m not about to tell Ugandans that we are going to score eight goals and progress,” Kirya earlier told upl.co.ug, “The chances are very low but we shall do our best to compete.”
Villa captain Jonathan Mugabi tells that if they are to stand any chance, not of overturning the result, but of avoiding home and away defeats, they will have to work three times more.
“They did not have as much possession as say, Al-Khartoum but punished each mistake we made,” Mugabi told Uganda’s Daily Monitor despite the Moroccans domination in Rabat.
“We shall try to minimize them this time and hope we can get a victory for our fans,” he added.
Villa will try and draw some inspiration from the 4-0 thrashing of SCVU in the local league, never mind the former being in the bottom three on the 16-team log.
Kirya’s side lie 12th on the log with 30 points but have six games in hand on leaders KCCA, who top on 51.
In contrast, Rabat are third in their domestic league. They drew goalless with RSB Berkane in their last match before travelling to Uganda on Saturday.
Villa will hope to Rabat are without their best after it emerged the Moroccans are without about seven players from the first meeting.
Mourad Batna, Mohamed Nahiri, Nabil Baha, Mehdi El Bassel, Abderrahmane El Houassli and Abdessalam Benjelloun are said not to have travelled for the tie at Namboole.
On their side, Villa will hope striker Umar Kasumba has his scoring boots on after netting a brace in the said thrashing of SCVU last Friday.