Mamelodi Sundowns suffered heavy defeat on Saturday afternoon in their last home encounter of the season. The Tshwane giants played in their home city for the last time in the 2021/22 season in the presence of a joyful crowd, however the day was spoilt by their unexpected defeat to Stellenbosch.
“It’s like one of those that happens in football, congratulations to coach Steve Barker. If it has to happen then I’d rather it happen to Coach Barker because he’s an incredible gentleman, an incredible servant and what a story because a lot of the history that he has made has been on this pitch.” Masandawana’s Co-Coach Rulani Mokwena congratulates his opponents after the game.
Bafana Ba Style will play match 30 of their DStv Premiership in KwaZulu-Natal in a week when they visit Royal AM. Downs will not only have their focus on their last league game for the season, but a bigger clash awaits the reigning champions at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium in the Nedbank Cup final.
“This week we have to train like a team that has lost 3-0 and train very, very hard and knuckle down and try to prepare ourselves for what’s gonna be very difficult two games to go before the season ends. It’s very important that we go to our next matches and try our level best to win so that we end the season on a very good note and to win so that we can prepare ourselves for a very, very difficult match that’s coming ahead.” Said Coach Rulani.
“I think today was a day of the unfamiliar. We don’t defend like that, we don’t concede goals like that [and] unfamiliar because our supporters generally don’t sing after we concede but today they were magnificent. The results also go to show that what we’ve done this season has been incredible. Today it shows that to win games in the Premier League and to be consistent it’s not as easy as people think and we’ve done that.”
The Tshwane giants have only won one of their three encounters this month despite having enjoyed their season with an unbelievable record of only three matches lost as they approach the end of the season. The reigning champions finished the previous season with 67 points and could possibly finish with 65 points this season if they are successful in their next encounter against Thwihli Thwahla in Durban.
“We said that when we won the league that the last 3 to 4 games are gonna be difficult because football without emotions is not football. Once you’ve won the league then there’s no intrinsic motivation to do more, to run more or to try more but I think the players, even with the temptation to give up towards the end of the second half, really tried. We lost the game because we made a lot of mistakes and the score is not a true reflection of the performance because we dominated, we created enough chances.” Coach Rulani gave an analysis of the encounter.
“[We had] 19 shots and they had 3 shots on targets which became goals. We had 24 box entries [which] we haven’t had the entire season and that was because we conceded a very soft goal at the beginning where we could’ve defended better, then we got the second against us because we had to push the game and try to influence the intensity by pushing the defensive line.”
Some players does deserve to be Sundown’s players, or may be the problem is with the technical team. Don’t know. Shame to Players and technical team.
I meant does not deserve to be sundown’s players.
We need to make some reinforcements here&there ship out Motupa,Mahlambi,Vila, because they help us with nothing & those players that r on loan must not come back except February,Phewa,Margerman&Keegan Allan.We need that du Preeze character &I don’t think that we can wakeup &sell Zwane anytime soon.That is our legend Masandawanas.Yes Mokoena as time goes on&gelling he will come alright.We can’t be worried about losing a match excepting putting our focus to the Nedbank Cup, Lambasting certain individuals as if we r still chasing the league is uncalled for.You can’t fool the mind Sundowns players know that the league is done & dusted,they can’t be serious about results that they know r dead rubbers.But to speak the truth I fancy that Ashley Du Preeze should be playing for us next season but looking for a defender in Sibisi kind of a deal is a big hell no..
Our weakest link int the team is our coward of a technical team,players can’t say no when selected.They keep on playing Zwane and Ralani when they are not offering nothing to the team as if we are guaranteed a win when they are playing.Those 3 coaches should be fired bcoz they don’t share same vision with the management,they recommended an old weak Ralani,i’ve never seen him winning the ball yet we play high press game,his arrival affected the progress of Maema and Kapinga,my point is technical team sign a very old play and management spend millions to bring in development specialist that show you something.We are going to lose lot of good young players bcoz our coaches want to play their peers,we have Margerman,Phewa and Mkhize who are doing well and come next season they will be loaned again,they are better than most of the coaches’ preferred players. For the development of both the team and our young players the current coaching staff should be fired or demoted. Lack of coaching ingenuity cost us a game,they new we were playing against speedy players yet they played useless Lebusa,the guy is not Downs material,they should have played Kekana and Lunga and also play Morena along side Shaulile to counter their speed instead of playing weak Ralani. Morena was our main man in the champions league now he is a bench warmer.Can anyone tell me the game we had a clean sheet when Lebusa was playing,the guy is a liability and don’t even deserve to captain our team.Even PSG want to fire a coach bcoz he failed in the champions league,we can’t be like Bayern,they won league 10 times in a row,and how many times had they won champions league in those 10 seasons or reached the finals?