Mamelodi Sundowns co-coach Rulani Mokwena has given his thoughts on the recruitment of Surprise Ralani and Teboho Mokwena during the January transfer window.

The Brazilians completed the signing of two new players, including Surprise Ralani from Cape Town City before capturing the services of Teboho Mokoena from SuperSport United.

Ralani joined the Tshwane giants on an 18-month contract with the option of a further year, while Mokwena left SuperSport for Sundowns after signing a three-and-a-half-year deal with an option of an additional year at Chloorkop.

“Ralani’s recruitment, of course, clearly brings a lot of question marks, particularly because of his age, but in football the most important thing in recruitment is probably in always trying to bring the right player, and sometimes the right player is not the player between a certain age,” Mokwena told his club’s official website.

“The right player sometimes is because of the needs of the team and how do you improve the quality and the strength of the team. Of course, there are two ways: one is by training, to use the type of players that you have and try to improve certain aspects, therefore improve the different components of the team.

“Secondly, you can do that by recruiting players, and we’ve decided to go in that direction because of the profile of player that Ralani is. If you look at Ralani in terms of his contribution to Cape Town City and you make a direct comparison to the type of player that he is – his profile, the average quality in the PSL and its availability within the market and, three, you also look at what you have in relation to the direction that you’d like the team to go towards.”

Sundowns have had a successful first-half campaign, having lost only one game in their 19 DStv Premiership fixtures and also advanced to the Caf Champions League group stages as they enter the second half of the season.

“If you go with the end in mind, trying to make sure that the team is ready for the Champions League, there are certain parameters that the team has got to meet and in that moment you’re trying to improve the team and make sure that it’s competitive on all fronts,’ he added.

“Ralani is what we would call an outlier, his numbers suggest that there’s a huge difference between Ralani and the average performances in the PSL. Ralani is already contributing to 1.4 on- average scoring opportunities as an offensive midfielder, the average in the PSL is 0.738 [and] that’s almost twice the number of scoring opportunities that Ralanai can create.

“He’s also measuring about 6.5 key passes in a game, as compared to 6.37 key passes and already at the age of 34 those numbers are higher than what you would normally get in the PSL. His ball progression, in other words his dribbling, is averaging 4.1 successful dribbles in a match as compared to 2.3 on average for offensive midfielders in this league. And, not only that, but even his defensive game he’s winning duels at 1.1 and those are the number of successful duels that he is winning every single time on average during 90 minutes, that gives you 0.018 as compared to the average in the PSL.”

The Sundowns mentor concluded by giving his thoughts on the Brazilians new recruits as they prepare to return to action after the PSL break.

“Fortunately, he was playing for a team like Cape Town City that also acted with alot of high press, and Ralani was winning 1.6 balls in very aggressive areas that resulted into chances more than the average offensive midfielder in the league at 0.4, his numbers clearly suggested that he’s a player that can come in and immediately contribute to improving the squad.

“Tebza’s recruitment has been one that there’s been a huge admiration from the club for a couple of windows now. Teboho represents possibly the new breed of South African footballers that are being produced, his professionalism, his conduct, his personality allow for us to be able to look for greater benefits, not just from a footballing perspective, but from a human perspective we all know how much work he does in giving back to the community, and in serving the space of people within his community and across the board to try to help and support and from that perspective we were very happy to welcome him into the team.

“What is very surprising is that a lot of people would think that Teboho is recruited mainly from a defensive perspective, to try to improve the team from that, but a closer look at Teboho’s profile seems to suggest that offensively as a central midfielder, there is a greater contribution to make to the team through the quality that he possess.

“After having lost Hlompho [Kekana] and the qualities that Hlompho could provide and possessed, which has helped the team to be so successful over the years, what was so important to us was to try to find a profile of a midfielder that could assist us with regard to unlocking defensive blocks with longer-range passes and shots, and then have possibilities to assist us in winning football games,” said Coach Rulani.

“Teboho in relation to all the other midfielders that we have, offensively is showing better possibilities for even greater contributions. When you think of Teboho you think of a midfielder that averages 2.6 shots at goal per match, which is an alarming statistic because there’s even strikers that don’t get on average two goals per match in the PSL,” Mokwena concluded.