Mamelodi Sundowns begin their CAF Champions League campaign after the international break with a clash against Maniema Union next Friday.
DURBAN – Mamelodi Sundowns co-coach Rhulani Mokwena is refusing to be complacent despite his team recording their fifth Premiership win of the season from six games following a 3-0 mauling of Swallows FC at Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria on Sunday.
More impressively, the Brazilians have yet to concede a goal in the league this season.
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“There were some good individual performances from Denis Onyango, Themba Zwane, Andile Jali, Divine Lunga. In certain moments Lyle Lakay and two centre-halves in Grant Kekana and Rushine De Reuck were focused on putting in good performances,” said Mokwena.
Mokwena believes that his troops need to be more clinical on the ball going forward.
“We felt that as a team we just looked to solve a lot of the problems through skill and the technical superiority that we possess on the pitch and that we lacked a little bit of intensity and full focus and that comes in moments when we are in possession of the ball,” Mokwena said.
Swallows did have opportunities to score in the first half as they attacked with confidence, but that changed in the second half as Sundowns stopped their attacks with confidence and ease.
“You can see that our rest defence is not so good. We’ve got a lot of isolations with full-backs and wingers, and then they create these possibilities because also with turnovers when we were a little bit lax on the ball. That was the biggest problem which fortunately we addressed at halftime and the second half was a lot better,” Mokwena said.
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The result means that Sundowns have a four-point advantage over SuperSport United, Royal AM and Stellenbosch FC after six games. While he believes that more can be done, Mokwena did see positives from the performance of his troops.
“It was not the best of performances today and there are still a lot of unforced errors, but we did enough to win the match and congratulations must go to the technical team coach Manqoba Mngqithi and the rest of the support staff.
“It was a good victory for the team and an important one against a team that gave us problems last season,” said Mokwena.
Sundowns begin their CAF Champions League campaign after the international break with a clash against Maniema Union next Friday.
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