Muntari banned from Asian Champions League game

Ghana international Sulley Muntari will miss Al Ittihad’s crunch meeting with Al Nasr from Dubai on Wednesday after the former AC Milan midfielder picked up a second yellow card of the group stage of the 2016 AFC Champions League.

Muntari was booked in the Matchday Three meeting with the club from the United Arab Emirates (pictured), which Al Nasr won 2-1 in Jeddah to move to the top of Group A at the halfway point.

The Saudis, however, are buoyed by the return of under 23 international duo Fahad Al Muwallad and Abdulrahman Al Ghamdi, who both missed the previous meeting between the clubs due to suspension.

“We are currently in a bad position in the group. We are in last place and this is not good for us,” said Al Ittihad coach Victor Piturca, who saw his side lose 4-2 to local rivals Al Ahli on Saturday in their most recent league match.

“We came to the United Arab Emirates in order to get a victory, which is our only hope if we want to continue in the competition.

“We want to fix the mistakes that we made in the previous matches and make a good comeback in the competition. We want to put in a strong performance and at get the three points, which is the most important thing for us.”

Al Nasr lead the group by a point from Lokomotiv from Uzbekistan with Brazilian Nilmar scoring twice in the teams’ previous meeting and Tareq Ahmed will return for Ivan Jovanovic’s side after missing the last game due to suspension.

“It will be a difficult match for us against Al Ittihad and hopefully we can continue our good comeback in the competition,” said the Al Nasr coach. “Al Ittihad are a strong team and they have several good and talented players.

“If we want to win tomorrow, we must have a better performance than the one that we had in Saudi Arabia. We worked very hard in recent weeks to concentrate on this match as we want to get the three points.”