Mamelodi Sundowns co-coach Manqoba Mngqithi feels his side could and should have scored more goals in their Caf Champions League Group A encounter with Al Ahly this past weekend.
Sundowns managed to do the double over rivals Ahly with a narrow 1-0 victory over the Egyptian giants at the FNB Stadium on Saturday after Peter Shalulile scored the decisive goal of the match.
The Brazilians now remain at the top of the Group A standings with 10 points after four games, while the Red Eagles are in second place – level on four points with third-placed Al-Hilal and Al-Merrikh in fourth.
Having already qualified for the quarter-finals, Sundowns will next take on Al Hilal at the Al-Hilal Stadium in Omdurman on 19 March before playing their final group game against Al-Merrikh at the Lucas Moripe Stadium on 1 April.
“I think the plan that we had worked, because we knew the areas in which they are strong and we knew how we can deal with those areas better,” Mngqithi told his club’s official website.
“One, they are strong when the ball is played behind the defense, [Mohamed] Sheriff is always going to cause you problems, but immediately you see a Percy [Tau] and an [Ayman] Ashraf in the same team, then you know they are looking to come into the hole in the red zone in front of the defence and behind your central midfield.
“We had to try to have a narrow defence to be able to take care, maybe with a plus one in defence and make sure that we deal better with Ashraf because he’s the one that would cause more problems, and I think that worked very well. There were balls that they were trying to play behind the defence, I think Rushine [De Reuck], Lyle [Lakay], Brian [Onyango] and [Khuliso] Mudau did very well to break the press when moments needed to happen.
“The gameplan worked very well, I think it’s a game where we could have scored more goals on the day, [nonetheless] I was still very unhappy with the header that we gave them at the death. I think Brian slept a little bit there by watching the ball and not looking in the box to see what was happening, but it was generally a very good performance from the boys, and a very good team work, very good togetherness.
“There were many moments in the first half where I was really irritated by our lack of precision, our lack of focus in moments that were really decisive – one of them, for Pavol to take that shot when he’s got Peter free next to him, it’s a tap-in then the game is over. When you score the second goal in this game everything comes down then you start playing, you can even score more than five if you do that, but if you don’t score the second goal the game becomes very nervy, anxious and emotional as well.”
Coach Mngqithi expressed his desire to have supporters back in full after Bafana Ba Style supporters were present at their Champions League clash at FNB Stadium.
“I think South Africa must really change and look at this thing very closely, we had the Africa Cup of Nations in Cameroon,” he added.
“If we really think as a country that we’ve rolled out enough in terms of our vaccines and we think that we are a bigger country in terms of our level of development, then we should be a little bit more confident that we have more people vaccinated in our country and because of that reason we should then show confidence even to the outside countries by also opening this this up.
“If you’ve got these people sitting on this side of the stand, what’s the difference if you had the same thing happening on the other side? Because if there’s still a risk, then there was a risk today.
“When we played at Al Ahly they opened for more than 5,000 people, but we only opened for 2,000, and in the Champions League we need that support. I also believe that even in the league we need a little bit more in terms of allowing the spectators,” Mngqithi concluded.
