Urawa Red Diamonds coach Maciej Skorza said that his side’s third place play-off against Al Ahly will be entirely different to their semi-final loss to Manchester City.
The Japanese side were dismantled 3-0 in their semi-final against the European champions, with Mateo Kovacic and Bernardo Silva each getting their names on the scoresheet to book a place in the final for Pep Guardiola’s men.
“We played against the best team in the world,” Skorza said in his press conference. “We expected them to play well and have more of the ball, and we weren’t good enough on the break.
“Manchester City created a lot of chances and reached our goal on several occasions. The Al Ahly game will be a tough one and we have to prepare well to face them.
“Al Ahly are a very different team to Manchester City, today we found a lot of difficulty in breaking them down, the Al Ahly game will be a different encounter.
“The experience you get from playing teams like these is very important, because they can punish you really easily, we need to review the mistakes we committed in tonight’s game to prepare for the game [against Al Ahly].”
Al Ahly are set to face Urawa Red Diamonds on Friday at 4:30pm Cairo Local Time.