Mamelodi Sundowns will be looking to do a cup and league ‘double’ over SuperSport United when the sides meet at the Lucas Moripe Stadium on Friday night.
The Brazilians knocked Matsatsantsa out of the MTN8, beating them 2-0 in the quarter finals of the competition last Sunday.
Sundowns co-coach Manqoba Mngqithi says it will be tough to beat SuperSport again in a space of a week.
“Playing SuperSport is always a tough match regardless of the competition and regardless of the frequency to how many times you have played them and what was the outcome of the previous results, so we are expecting another tough encounter. It took us 80 minutes in the previous match to break the match down, and again we are going for the same encounter, which is always fierce, very aggressive [with] a lot of aerial battles and a very good team to play against.”
“[They are] coached by one of the best coaches in the country so we are expecting a very competitive match which we have to be prepared for and never take things for granted. We all know it was not the easiest match that we played this weekend so we know what to expect.”
Mngqithi also hinted that one if not both of the new signings Marcelo Allende and Abubeker Nasir who scored in the MTN8 clash against the sides, could start the game on Friday.
“The possibility of one of them starting is there, but we’ll have to see what happens in our matchday minus one training session. I wouldn’t really think that it would be a temptation to start them, I think it would probably be based on the processes that we are filling inside, such as the number of minutes that we think they can play.”
“If we feel that they are ready to give us the 90 minutes we might decide to start them because it was never an issue of whether they can start the match or not, it was mainly an issue of how far they can go in a match and they’ve played two matches as substitutes.”
The Tshwane giants have been showing their superiority in recent years in the Premier Soccer League, and they are perceived to have a stronghold in all their competitions. Downs have collected three wins in their first five matches of league competition, Coach Manqoba demonstrated their approach to competitions by saying, “With our periodization it’s always important to know that we don’t want to start on a high, we use the first five matches as part of the last cycle of our preparation period.”
“If you get the outcomes that are very good in those first five matches it’s good for you, but you know that you’re still in the preparatory phase. Knowing the number of matches that we are expected to play within the next two months now it is also very important to periodize our work properly to make sure that we don’t burn out quickly and that we are ready to play until the last match, and that requires a lot when you consider that we are playing two to three matches every week. It’s gonna be even more difficult for many teams to cope with that and maybe for us it will be slightly better considering that we’ve been in this for many seasons now with the Champions League and all these other matches that we play per season.”
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