TP Mazembe coach Lamine N’diaye says his team will respect Red Arrows in Saturday’s CAF Champions League second round, first leg encounter at the Levy Mwanawasa Stadium.

Addressing a pre-match press briefing, N’diaye says his lads were expecting a tough game but will be looking to start strongly. “It is going to be a very difficult game because we are playing a team which has already played two games,” he said.

“We have experience in the Champions League so we will prepare the game like that, even if we have had some difficult. We will do better in tomorrow’s game.”

He added: “We respect Red Arrows, they are a good team, and they had a good game at home against Nyasa Big Bullets. The objective for Mazembe is to get a good result and go back home to finish the game.”

He admitted that TP Mazembe had fallen down in pedigree as it no longer had a lot of national team players in their fold. “We can’t compare the TP now and then. We used to have nine players for national team in DRC…at that time we had a lot of international players like Zambia and DRC. The players we have now are just playing CHAN,” he said.

N’diaye is not new to Zambian opposition having been at TP Mazembe in 2011 when they saw off Power Dynamos after a 1-1 home result and 6-0 away defeat.