Mamelodi Sundowns co-coach Manqoba Mngqithi says they will “pull out all stops” to get a positive result against Orlando Pirates in their upcoming DStv Premiership encounter on Saturday afternoon.
The Brazilians will be hoping to extend their winning run to three games when they travel to the Orlando Stadium to square off against the Buccaneers.
Sundowns comes into this encounter sitting atop the DStv Premiership standings with 10 points, two ahead of the Soweto giants in fourth place.
Mngqithi insists they will respect their opponents during the encounter, but is confident his side will walk away with maximum points.
“The most important thing when it comes to matches like this is to always have a fair share of humility and respect. [There is] no room for arrogance, we may have done well in the last few matches but we are facing a very good team that is on form and that has just played a very good game against Chippa United,” Mngqithi told his club’s official website.
“We have to give [the game] the respect it requires and do our work, profile them properly, do our analysis and see which areas can we capitalise on, which areas are they strong on and make sure that we deal with that. We know that Pirates on transition have always been one of the strongest teams in the country but, be that as it may, that also becomes a very big weakness on their side.
“We’ve emphasised on taking care of the process and the process is the number of points that we want to achieve in each cycle and whoever happens to be an opponent in that space, we focus on that in the space of making sure that we achieve our desired target and we’ve got the number of points that we are looking for and Pirates is that team that must give us the points that can help us to achieve our ultimate target,” he added.
“The boys have worked very hard, they are giving it their best shot, their attitude in training has been exceptionally good because at Sundowns you are expected to counter-press, to break the press and also to high-press and all these are very demanding actions in the game but our boys have adapted to this. It’s something that we emphasise on a daily basis, that the intensity must always be kept at the right level and from what we are seeing we are all encouraged, we are happy with the progress that we see.”
He continued: “A game like Pirates will always have elements of pressure, elements of intrinsic motivation and that type of motivation is most likely to bring an element of anxiety in it. We always have to control that space and, fortunately, a number of players that we are using are players that are used to the pressure of playing for a team like Sundowns.
“The fact that we are playing against Mandla [Ncikazi] and Fadlu [Davids], those are very creative and intelligent coaches. We know that they bring a thing or two into the game, but we will profile them accordingly and see what we can get. The good thing is that we know almost all their players, if we fail to deal with their strategy then we can easily profile their individual players and understand what to expect in each and every player that they have.
“We are confident of the team we have, from the analysis department to the coaches that we have and everybody else who is supporting the team, we will pull out all stops to get the results that we require.”
