But TP Mazembe's second appearance at the Club World Cup was almost over before it started.
"In TP Mazembe you find players who come from all the different provinces, " Katumbi said.
Ahly have to avoid defeat to surprise Group A leaders TP Mazembe to aviod going out of the competition.
The first quarterfinal match will be played on Friday, when African champions TP Mazembe face Asian champions Pohang Steelers.
The guest entrants and former African champions TP Mazembe of DR Congo.
In the other game in Group A, reigning champions TP Mazembe fought back from 1-0 down to beat visiting Esperance of Tunisia 2-1 in Lubumbashi.
Simba were originally beaten by TP Mazembe, the side which lost 2-0 to Inter in the final of the Fifa World Club Cup in 2010.
Former Ghana boss Milovan Rajevac was named Coach of the Year, the Serbian seeing off competition from TP Mazembe's Lamine N'Diaye and Egypt's Hassan Shehata.
The forward also scored one and created one in Inter's 3-0 win over Congolese side TP Mazembe to seal the Club World Cup final on Saturday.
"Now that I have delivered the cup to the president of TP Mazembe, for sure I'm free to move now, because I've accomplished my mission, " he said.
The Nigerian side are only the second team ever to retain African club football's top prize after TP Mazembe of the DR Congo won the title in 1967 and 1968.
Katumbi's money has transformed TP Mazembe from a failing club with an illustrious past -- they won back to back African titles in 1968 and 1969 -- into the best team on the continent.
The Coach of the Year award will be contested between Lamine N'Diaye, who led TP Mazembe to the African Champions League title, Milovan Rajevac, the man who masterminded Ghana's World Cup campaign, and Egypt's Hassan Shehata.
Yet Katanga has enjoyed relative peace in recent years, in large part thanks to the province's popular governor Moise Katumbi, a billionaire Roman Abramovich-esque character who has regulated the region's previously chaotic natural mineral extraction and bankrolled TP Mazembe in the process.
"Just to give you an idea of how uneven the playing field is, I met Katumbi in Harare when I watched TP Mazembe play the Zimbabwean champions, " said Steve Bloomfield, foreign editor of Monocle magazine and author of the book Africa United: How Football Explains Africa.
Alain Dioko of TP Mazembe, Mohamed Gedo and Ahmed Hassan both of Al-Ahly of Egypt are nominated for best African-based Player, while Tunisian side CS Sfaxien, FUS Rabat of Morocco and TP Mazembe of DR Congo will be aiming to win best club side of 2010.
The huge budget helped TP Mazembe win the African Champions League title in 2009 for the first time in more than 40 years, and with it qualification for the FIFA Club World Cup, a competition that pits the champions from the ruling body's six confederations against each other.
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