Mamelodi Sundowns have explained what influenced their decision to spend to take a bloated squad for their week and a half long sojourn in Egypt.
Sundowns have arrived back from Polokwane where they played Baroka on Monday night and will proceed straight to Cairo where they will play Al-Merreikh on Saturday.
The Sudanese have been forced to move their home match to the Al Salam Stadium in Cairo due to the stringent demands by CAF for stadiums used at this stage of the competition.
Sundowns have already been forced to move their home game against Al-Hilal last Friday to Royal Bafokeng Stadium in Rustenburg after Loftus Versfeld and Lucas Masterpieces Moripe both failed to meet the requirements.
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After their meeting with Al-Merreikh, The Brazilians will also face Pitso Mosimane's Al Ahly in the same city on February 25.
"We will take a substantial number of players considering that we are playing two matches," says Manqoba Mngqithi, the Sundowns co-coach.
"Normally, we take 25 players for one match but this time around we will take a little bit more because we know there are covid issues.
"There is also the fact that we are playing two matches and some players are not very ready to play the first and maybe they will be ready to play the second one so it is one of those and we have to take as much as we can," he points out while then detailing the stay in Cairo.
"Better stay (in Cairo) than to travel in and out. If maybe Egypt Air was operating on the days when we would have loved to travel, we would consider going and coming back because we would be having direct flights to there.
"But now we don't have direct flights because Egypt Air flies on very few days and on days that we are targeting to go to Egypt we, unfortunately, have a situation where we don't have Egypt Air.
"So, we must look at all these other airlines which makes the travelling very long because it has a stop somewhere and continues so I think a stay in Egypt is the best.
"Plus, we looked at it as coaches and everybody else involved at the club and we all feel we might end up having a lot of travel fatigue if we were to travel in and out when you are still expected to go back the following week.
"So, we will be finding ourselves a very good camping place so that we can be able to have a proper training program that side so that we can be able to have a proper preparation for the second match," explains Mngqithi.