Preliminary round

First leg - Feb. 12Zanaco (ZAM) vs APR FC (RWA)

Second leg - Feb. 18APR FC vs Zanaco

National football league defending champions, APR FC started residential training on Thursday at Shyorongi ahead of their 2017 CAF Champions League, preliminary round tie against Zambia’s Zanaco.

Jimmy Mulisa’s team will travel to Zambia on February 8 ahead of the first leg match scheduled for February 11 with the return leg set for a week later, in Kigali.

The army side are in high spirit after beating their archrivals Rayon Sports 1-0 to win the inaugural Heroes’ Day Cup on Wednesday. Twenty-four players are in camp at Shyorongi where Mulisa will choose 20 players, who will travel to Lusaka.

"This time we want to improve on our results in this competition especially away from home and the only way to achieve that is by training hard. We are a strong team but football is about scoring goals and we don’t seem to be scoring enough of them—this is something that we need to work on,” said Mulisa.

Mulisa, who was part of the APR side that reached the third qualification round in 2004, under the late Jean Marie Ntagwabira, believes his team is capable of overcoming Zanaco en-route to the first qualification round.

He noted, "We have been analyzing their videos and way of playing, and hopefully we will be able to not only put on a good performance but most importantly to get a good away result ahead of the return leg.”

The 16-time record champions will need a positive result before hosting the return leg on February 18 at Amahoro National Stadium.

Meanwhile, news from Zambia indicates that Zanaco will play against DR Congo giants TP Mazembe in a friendly as they prepare to face APR.

The Lusaka-based club will start this year’s CAF Champions League campaign without several key players, namely; Isaac Chansa, who is in Egypt, Rodric Kabwe, who joined Zulu Ajax Cape Town, Phiri Salulani and Captain Ziyo Tembo, who went to Polokwane United.

Their head coach Wedson Nyerenda also resigned to take up Mozambique national team coaching job, which means his assistant Numba Mumamba, will be in charge and will be assisted by Robin Munsaka.

Since they made their debut in Africa’s biggest club competition in 1997, APR have never reached the group stages whereas their opponents Zanaco reached the last 16 in 2010, their best record so far.

The winner between APR and Zanaco will face the winner of the game between Ngaya de Mbe of Cameroon and Young Africans of Tanzania. The first round fixtures will then be played on the weekends of March 11-13 and 17-19.

New format

Under the new club competitions format, winners of both the preliminary round and round of 16 will after drawing of lots, be placed into four groups of four teams each in both Champions League and Confederation Cup.

After a round-robin of matches (home and away), the first two of each group will qualify for the quarter-finals, which opens a new phase of knockout matches till the final.

In the CAF Champions League, the winner will pocket $2.5m while first runners-up will earn $1.25m. The semi-finalists will each get $875,000 and the quarter-finalists will bag $650,000, while teams that will finish third and fourth in the group, will each get $550,000.

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