Pitso Mosimane has talked up the Absa Premiership encounter between Mamelodi Sundowns and Kaizer Chiefs, suggesting that encounters between the two teams always delivers fireworks.

Mosimane warned his charges about the wounded Chiefs side, who are on the back of a 2-1 loss to Baroka prior to the international break.

‘It’s always going to be a big match,’ Mosimane told his club’s official website.

‘It will be a little bit difficult for us because we are playing them right after they lost to Baroka FC.

‘There is a lot that has been written about them that they need to turn things around, that this is the time to do that and they need to stop conceding goals at the end and all those things.

‘We are aware that it’s going to be difficult. But irrespective of that, it is going to be an A game. We respect them.”

Mosimane spoke of the CAF Champions League heartbreak, which saw his side get knocked out by Moroccan side Wydad Casablanca in the quarter-finals of the tournament.

‘When Sundowns loses the league, the following season they’ve gone and won it [under my tenure].

‘We always bounce back. Maybe we can use that as an excuse, that we can bounce back. It was very, very sad to be knocked out of the Champions League. We never saw ourselves out of the tournament. We are still licking our wounds because we know deep inside that we could have done better against Wydad, especially here at home…I think that we did exceptionally well there.

‘Had we had the full team, we could be talking something different. Even against Esperance, I said that if we had one attacker we will do well. We didn’t have everybody but we got a positive result against Esperance.”\

‘We struggled for the better part of the Champions League because of injuries. We’ve been coming and going. We’ve struggled to have a consistent team. We had about five months of an unsettled team due to injuries and the heavy workload.

‘But we have numbers now so we don’t have any excuses. We will come back to the Champions League,’ he concluded.

The two sides face off at the Loftus Versveld Stadium tonight with kick off set for 19:30.

Photo: Sydney Mahlangu/Backpagepix