Mamelodi Sundowns have given their new signings Ronwen Williams and Sipho Mbule their debut in the opening of the 2023/24 Premier Soccer League season.
Bafana Ba Style fans were treated to two new faces as they edged past Cape Town City 2 – 0 on Friday evening in their first league game of the season. Bafana Bafana international goalie, Williams was officially announced as a Brazilian player last month, while 24-year old Mbule made the move to Chloorkop in June as the Champions look to successfully defend their DStv Premiership title. Masandawana Co-Coach Manqoba Mngqithi explained the importance of giving their new members an early run in their campaign.
“In Ronwen the decision was to try and induct him as quickly as possible, the road ahead is a little bit rough and the competition in that space is still going to be rough, but it’s always better when he’s going to be playing at the back of a performance against Cape Town City because already he has played a very intense and very high profile game. The save that he pulled will maybe also help him to calm his nerves a little bit.”
“It’s a decision that we took as coaches, Denis [Onyango], Kennedy [Mweene] and Reyaad [Pieterse] have been very good at training and so has Ronwen. It’s also very important to induct a player that you think is going to be very important for you going forward with matches like this,because if you play him against a so-called small team and he does not perform well then everybody is on top of him and everybody is no longer too sure whether the decision was right or wrong, so it’s always better to introduce them in big matches.”
Mbule made his competitive appearance for the club in the second half of the encounter and showed a bit of flair in the battle as the team went on to seal a hard fought victory over The Citizens.
“He has improved a lot physically, he has lost a lot of weight, he’s still work in progress and giving him an opportunity today was also to shake off that anxiety and the feeling of wondering what will happen, but to play them early so that their integration process is early enough before pressure amounts.” Said Coach Manqoba.
“We think those few minutes might’ve helped us in one way or the other, because we could’ve easily played [Andile Jali] AJ, [Sphelele Mkhulise] Pitso or any other player, but we felt in the last few minutes we should give it to him and probably the same thing that we were thinking of on Ronwen – that they must be inducted and integrated into the team very quickly so that we can get the ball rolling with all of them.”
Mamelodi Sundowns will be back in action on Wednesday, 10 August to face TS Galaxy at Loftus Versfeld Stadium.
Management should intervene on this favouritism issue,the very same paring of Mandela and useless Lebusa made us loose to a very weak team in the champions league,those two are very poor both aerially and on feet,we’re lucky to come out with a clean sheet.No normal coach can replace Zwane by a feather like Ralani and skilful and creative Domingo by a tractor like Mvala.Substitute are meant to have positive impact on the game not weaken the team like those useless coaches did on Friday.The ladies coach can do better than those coaches.Yesterday day I watched our ladies team and was very impressed with the level of professionalism and knowledge from the technical team,after halftime they replaced Morifi by Kekana,Mokwena by Smith and the games never dropped those substitutes gave the same output if not more.You could the team is being selected on merit.Members let us be realistic can you play Lebusa and Onyango ahead of De Reuck and Kekana?Onyango plays better when playing alongside either Kekana or De Reuck.We should have always have a reliable central defenders like at the ladies,you can’t see coaches tempering with the central paring of Mbane and captain Nhlapo.We love this team too much and know that this team can conquer the whole of Africa under the right technical team,it pains us to see coaches playing their friends or favourites ahead of merit.God forgive me,I so wish Lebusa andRalani can get a long term injuries.Those idiots of coaches always say they sign better than what we have but Ralani is not better than Maema and Kapinga,the only thing he’s better than them is age.