Mamelodi Sundowns brushed aside CR Belouizdad 4-1 in the first leg of the CAF Champions League quarter finals at the Nelson Mandela Stadium in Algiers on Saturday evening. Masandawana opened the scoring lines early in the first half when Peter Shalulile got to the end of a perfectly curled in delivery from his teammate Aubrey Modiba, the Namibian international went on to score a brace in the encounter, meanwhile Neo Maema and Cassius Mailula scored a goal apiece.
“Congratulations to the players, this group, the football club in its entirety and everybody involved. Congratulations to our supporters back at home, I’m sure they enjoyed watching the team, but as I said it’s feet firmly on the ground this is only half time.” Masandawana’s Head Coach, Rulani Mokwena showed admiration for the results they got in Algiers.
“A lot of credit and respect must go to the players, big personalities and big performances. Lots of humility, we beat a very good side, we still have to face a very good side in Pretoria. A top coach, top players and it’s only half way.”
The Brazilians produced what looked like an effortless display of football in the evening, holding on to ball possession and putting pressure on the hosts throughout the encounter. Coach Rulani indicated that his team pulled out all the stops to get these results, he said: “It’s the quarter finals of the Champions League, it’s tough. We should be under no illusions that the score line represents how physical and demanding this game was for us.”
“We did a lot of work on the opposition, we prepared and put in a lot of hours to make sure that the performance was good.
We beat a very, very good side with a lot of Algerian internationals, such as Alexis Guendouz, Zakaria Draoui, Youcef Laouafi and Mokhtar Belkhither, these are players that play for the Algerian national team.”
“The game was about small details and will always be about small details when you get to this level. We asked for lots of concentration and lots of sacrifice, the players also worked very, very hard in watching the opposition videos so we knew a lot about the opposition.”
Wow,what a performance,we played on a front foot.Selection of Mbule and Morena was the ace to our performance they both have football brains,comfortable on the ball and not afraid to turn with the ball.Maema should work very hard on his ball possession and passing because he losses lots of balls.Well done and deserved victory.Lastly i think Peterse should play all our remaining league games.