Mamelodi Sundowns new signing Phakamani Mahlambi is adamant that his time spent with Egyptian giants Al Ahly will not go down as a failed move.

The former Absa Premiership Young Player of the Year became the first-ever South African to move to the land of the Pharaohs after he penned a multi-million rand contract with Ahly in September last year

However, things, didn’t go according to plan for Mahlambi, who was snapped up by Masandawana a year after making the move to Africa’s most decorated team.

‘I don’t think I failed [in Egypt]. Obviously, people will have different opinions of I failed or what,’ he told kickoff.

‘But from my side, my coming back was to start all over again and prepare for a new chapter that will take me to another level. Because when I was there everything was good, but I think it was time for me to come back and get the game time and return to the performance I was at when I left the country,’ he added.

The 21-year-old, who netted on debut in the 3-3 draw with AmaZulu, refused to put pressure on himself by predicting how many goals he would score in his first season with Pitso Mosimane’s side.

‘I don’t want to put myself under pressure and give myself a task of scoring a certain number of goals come the end of the season.

‘All I can say is that I want to score goals that will see the team win, that will see us all happy as players of Sundowns. So I won’t say how many goals I want to score because at the end of the day when I say I want to score this number of goals, if I don’t reach them, people will say you promised us to score this number of goals.”

‘So what is better is, I’ll score whenever I can,’ he concluded.

Sundowns snapped up Mahlambi on a five-year-deal and are said to have paid a whopping $900,000 (R13,2-million) for his services.