Coach Rulani Reflects On Second Group Win In Cameroon

First half goals from Cassius Mailula and Thapelo Morena has Mamelodi Sundowns emerge victorious on their travels in Africa as they defeated the Champions of Cameroon Coton Sport FC by three goals to one on Friday evening. The win keeps Bafana Ba Style at the summit of Group B with six points from two games.

Head Coach Rulani Mokwena paid compliments to both sides after the match, and expressed his delight with his side’s ability to execute the game plan:

“Congratulations to Mamelodi Sundowns, the technical team and the players. I thought in the first half we were very good, we played according to instructions and everything went according to plan. We got the two goals, and then Coton Sport reacted and think [their substitutions] were good to bring intensity in midfield.”

“In the second half I think we struggled a little bit in the beginning, we were put under a lot of pressure. We will improve, we have to get better. Now we focus on recovering the team and getting ready for the difficult game against Al Ahly.”

With Masandawana having completed two games already in the group stages, Coach Rulani was full of praise for his side which contained a lot of players competing in the continental competition for the first time and said there is plenty more to come: 

“We will get better, we have to get better. A lot of my players were playing for the first time in the Champions League, Cassius Mailula, Teboho Mokoena, Ronwen Williams, we had Denis Onyango as the number one last season, Mothobi Mvala, Grant Kekana and Marcelo Allende. This is the experience we’ll get and we’ll get better, its a very big three points.”

The win against Coton Sport means Masandawana sit on six points and have beat two of the three teams drawn against in Group B. Coach Rulani warned however that Bafana Ba Style still have their eyes firmly focused on the job at hand.

“I’ll say again, there are four very good teams in this group, we still have games to play. We still have to host Coton Sport in Pretoria. The focus is to get as close as possible to 10 points so that we get ourselves mathematically into a position where we can think of ourselves in the quarter-finals.”

Up next for Masandawana is a battle against continental rivals Ah Ahly SC of Egypt in the third group meeting of this year’s group stage installment.

2 Responses
  1. DOWNS4EVER

    Happy with three points.Watched other teams play and realized that our team is on another level and credit to coach Rulani for a job well done.We just need to be consistent for 90+ minutes cos we tend to fade away in the dying minutes. Good luck in Cairo.

    1. Levy Themba

      Thank you Coach for your observations on the teams performance on Friday, all the best on your upcoming fixture against Aly Ahly and wish you the Yellow nation can get maximum points👆👆👆👆👆👆