Africa-Press – Eswatini. THE country’s CAF envoys Royal Leopard left the country yesterday for the OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg where they will connect a flight to Turkey before connecting to Algeria. ‘Ingwemabalabala’ will face the most successful club in Algeria, Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie (JS Kabylie) in the 2021/22 Total Energies CAF Confederation Cup additional second preliminary round second leg match. The police side beat JS Kabylie 1-0 in the first leg match played at Mavuso Sports Centre in November last year.
The 25-member delegation is led by EFA executive member Nichodemus ‘Ace’ Mashwama. The match will be played tomorrow. Players Lungelo Tsabedze and Phumlani Dlamini missed the trip due to injuries.
Royal Leopard Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Frank Hurube confirmed that the team left yesterday. He said the team was supposed to travel via Italy but due to COVID-19 restrictions they could not use it, hence they would travel via Turkey. “We hope to travel safely. We also urge all Emaswati to pray with the team as we travel to Algeria.” Hurube said they needed to win this game to make it through to the group stages.
The match has been postponed twice due to the COVID-19 pandemic following the outbreak of the new Omicron variant in the SADC region.
The local envoys stand to pocket about E4.3 million if they reach the group stages. Hurube said they would have to work extra hard if they were to achieve their goal of reaching the group stages of the tournament for the first time.
They will become the second Eswatini team to reach this stage after Mbabane Swallows during the 2017 edition. Meanwhile, JS Kabylie have represented Algeria in the Champions League on 16 occasions, the Confederation Cup five times, the now-defunct Cup Winners’ Cup on two occasions, and the now-defunct CAF Cup on four instances.
Leopard were part of the 16 teams that dropped out of the CAF Champions League second round preliminary round after a 3-2 defeat by Angola’s Grupo Desportivo Sagrada Esperance and they were drawn against the 16 teams that remain in the CAF Confederation Cup after the second round of the preliminaries. The winners of this tie will face SA side, Orlando Pirates.
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