Wednesday evening at Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium, Mamelodi Sundowns resumed their winning ways against Chippa United in a battle for points. Downs co-coach Manqoba Mngqithi reflects on the difficulties the Brazilians experienced in Gqeberha. The Brazilians, who had lost their second game of the season prior to this match, are now in first place in the DStv Premiership after beating the Chili Boys by only one goal.
“We expected a very tough match, Chippa has been dominant in set pieces and they’ve scored quite a lot of goals in that space. We were concerned that if the game was played in our half and they created a large number of set pieces, they could cause us difficulties; as a result, we played the game more in the opposing half to put them under pressure. But credit must be given to their goalkeeper, I believe he was exceptional today, when you have 91% ball possession in the final third and the opposition has only 9, that says something about the game, but at the end of the day with all of the shots on goal and everything that we tried, we only scored one goal in the dying moments of the game.
“In all honesty, I believe Chippa had a very great performance with their low block and also very good transitioning moments, which nearly gave us difficulties, which is to be expected. Our rest defense is not in the correct position, and we would always be caught, but other than that, I believe it was an interesting match for spectators, but not for us as coaches, as we believe we should’ve scored at least two goals given the number of opportunities and the amount of work we’ve put in. We should have scored early to avoid being in a position where we had to dig extremely deep to find the result.”
Masandawana have scored only 12 goals thus far this season, a number that is considered poor given the Champions’ propensity to score a huge number of goals. The defending Champions have played seven league matches and have struggled in the final third of opponents due to the defensive structures that have been set up against them. Coach Manqoba noted the difficulties his squad will face in their title defense, he said: “It’s what we always anticipate that we are going to have more than 80% of matches played with a very low block, and this is what’s happened throughout the seasons and sometimes even some of the big teams.”
“We are always preparing our players for this, and we create the possibilities that we want to generate, because our goal is to break the game down very early, which is what I believe happened in our game against Kaizer Chiefs, where we put them to the sword very early on and now they must come out. But if you convert one of these early opportunities, the game’s complexion changes and it becomes very difficult for the team who had planned to sit back because they must suddenly come at you.”
“Therefore, when you score, it becomes easier to score a lot of goals because the strategy that was prepared throughout the week was always to sit back and make life difficult. However, this type of game requires a lot of courage and character from our team, as well as a lot of patience not to always look for that final pass. The second half was a little bit better with more touches and passes to try to find openings and frustrate the opponent because the ball is always in motion, and I think we accomplished that quite well. However, when you’re not scoring, the game appears to be very difficult.”