Mamelodi Sundowns co-coach Rulani Mokwena feels his side showed resilience and a good fighting spirit in a very difficult away match against AS Maniema Union this past Sunday.

The Brazilians were held to a 2-2 draw with Maniema in the first leg of their Caf Champions League second preliminary round tie at the Stade des Martyrs Stadium.

Themba Zwane’s brace will have Sundowns taking two important away goals into the return leg when the two sides meet at Loftus Versfeld Stadium on 24 October.

Although Mokwena rues his sides missed chances against Maniema, the Sundowns mentor admits that they grew into game and performed better in the second half.

“Yeah, always difficult after a Fifa international break. To come back particularly because, of course, there’s not a lot of training time,” Mokwena told the club’s media department.

“And then you miss a couple of players with regard to preparation, and then you get players coming back from different playing concepts and spaces.

“But we showed resilience and a good fight in a very difficult away match, with very difficult conditions and against a very, very good team that was motivated and fought for 90 minutes,” he continued.

“For us, the first half wasn’t very good. We made a lot of, a lot of unforced errors. We struggled a little bit with the boxes today.

“Only in the first half we managed the two buildups that they got, we created chances immediately from those two scenarios, including the penalty when they started from the back.

“But I think that then said to them no more starting, and they then went along to Kitwa with the No 9 and played off the second ball that forced us a little bit too dragging our line a little bit deeper,” he added.

“Our turnovers were far too much and, yeah, unfortunately even with that situation where Mosa, unfortunately, made a missed pass, it started further up when we just couldn’t keep the ball with Pavol [Safranko] and Peter [Shalulile].

“And that was our story in the first half, too many turnovers, very short strings of passes, we couldn’t retain our compactness in possession, and then we struggled a little bit on transition.

“It was better in the second half, even the numbers speak a very good language where we did a little bit better with the boxes, and we did a little bit better with minimising turnovers, which helped us to be in a bit more control of the game.”