Coach Pitso Mosimane has again flagged his concern about his Mamelodi Sundowns side beginning to run out of steam as he now looks to patch up morale after their heavy defeat to Bidvest Wits in Saturday’s MTN8 final at the Mbombela Stadium in Nelspruit‚ Mpumalanga.
“I’ve said it before now‚ not only now‚ and we saw it against Zesco‚ that we are showing that we are running a little bit out of steam – not getting to the second balls and tackles. I’m happy I’ve said it before and not now just because we lost‚” said Mosimane.
“It has been a challenge to play against well rested teams. It’s a challenge to lift the team up. But we can also say these things happen for a reason. Maybe [if] we won the MTN8 and we [wouldn’t] win the Champions League. I’d swap that for sure‚ because you know the MTN8 is going to come around every year but the Champions League not that often. It takes many‚ many years to get there.
“But I’m not trying to say we didn’t want to beat Wits. We tried‚ we wanted to win it but we lost it. But we’ll come back to the top eight again.”
Sundowns next meet Zamalek in the first leg of the African Champions League final in Atteridgeville on Saturday‚ October 15 with the return leg in Egypt one week later.
Mosimane said it was key that his side now tried to rest as much as possible.
“We’ve been going for 15 months now but we knew about the programme so we are not complaining. We made a lot of mistakes. The conditions didn’t suit our style of play but football is played under all conditions. We never got any rhythm going‚” the coach said of the 3-0 defeat in Nelspruit.
TMG Digital/TMG Sport
