Rulani Mokwena admits he knew it wasn’t going to be an easy coming into their Nedbank Cup last-16 clash, despite Mamelodi Sundowns claiming a comfortable 6-0 victory over Mathaithai FC on Tuesday evening.
The Brazilians advanced to the quarter-finals of the Nedbank Cup after eliminating the ABC Motsepe League side at the Lucas Moripe Stadium through goals from Surprise Ralani, Themba Zwane, Lebohang Maboe, Andile Jali and a brace by Thabiso Kutumela.
Despite claiming a huge win on the night, Mokwena showed his respect towards Mathaithai for putting up a real fight against the Tshwane giants.
“Congratulations, firstly, to the boys for advancing the team into the next round, we want to be the type of a team that has a problem with a fixture list,” Mokwena told SuperSport TV after the game.
“We want to be the team that is playing every three days, so congratulations to the team. Commiserations to the opposition but also you can congratulate them for getting this far.
“It’s a cup of dreams, I’m sure for many of them it was a dream come true to share the pitch with some of their idols and some of the best players in the country.
“So, ja, for them to lose against Mamelodi Sundowns is not a train smash and hopefully they have learned a lot. They can take that to the league and even in their own personal development, individual players and improve.
“We would have loved a 1-0 but the boys gave us a little more than the 1-0. Ja, in certain moments the performance was not good enough. We knew it was not going to be easy.
“These are some of the most difficult games for professional footballers to perform in because you can’t fool the mind. The mind knows, with all due respect, that you’re playing against a lesser [opposition].
“Coming from the lower league you can’t tell the mind you’re playing against a different profile or opposition and it becomes very difficult to get the motivation and that was the hardest thing for us to do.
“But we tried our level best to make sure that we spent sleepless nights, we come with information about the opposition so they see through our actions that we take this game very seriously.
“But we struggled, as I said, with the cohesion and when you don’t have the cohesion you try to solve the game with a lot of qualitative superiority, which we showed today,” Mokwena concluded.
