Mamelodi Sundowns’ coach Pitso Mosimane is weary of Kaizer Chiefs who come into their mouth-watering league clash on Tuesday night at Loftus Versfeld at the back of a defeat to Baroka FC.
Chiefs will be looking to bounce back at the expense of ‘The Brazilians’. But it won’t be easy as the African champions come into this match after a morale-boosting win over Platinum Stars in the league. That victory puts Sundowns just six points behind first-placed Baroka FC with three games in hand.
“It’s always going to be a big match,” Mosimane said. “It will be a little bit difficult for us because we are playing them right after they lost to Baroka FC. There is a lot that has been written about them that they need to turn things around, that this is the time to do that and they need to stop conceding goals at the end and all those things. We are aware that it’s going to be difficult. But irrespective of that, it is going to be an A game. We respect them.”
This match will be Sundowns’ second game since the elimination in the quarterfinals of the CAF Champions League through penalties by Moroccan side Wydad Casablanca. It’s a defeat that the club will be looking to get over, which makes them deadly as Sundowns always respond in emphatic style after a disappointment.
“When Sundowns loses the league, the following season they’ve gone and won it (under my tenure),” Mosimane said. “We always bounce back. Maybe we can use that as an excuse, that we can bounce back. It was very, very sad to be knocked out of the Champions League. We never saw ourselves out of the tournament. We are still licking our wounds because we know deep inside that we could have done better against Wydad, especially here at home…I think that we did exceptionally well there. Had we had the full team, we could be talking something different. Even against Esperance, I said that if we had one attacker we will do well. We didn’t have everybody but we got a positive result against Esperance.”
“We struggled for the better part of the Champions League because of injuries. We’ve been coming and going. We’ve struggled to have a consistent team. We had about five months of an unsettled team due to injuries and the heavy workload. But we have numbers now so we don’t have any excuses. We will come back to the Champions League.”
