Greatness awaits Pitso and his Sundowns side

Iwant to talk about Mamelodi Sundowns this week. In fact, I wish I had an entire page to express my feelings about Pitso Mosimane’s team’s achievement. But let me first start by congratulating them. Before I go into details about why I am sitting here with a smile on my face, I want to share my feelings on Kaizer Chiefs as well.

I think the two wins are what Steve Komphela’s team really needed. The team was so low on confidence they were sometimes chasing shadows on the field and you could see they couldn’t wait for the final whistle.

The wins have not been pretty, but are very important as they bring back the confidence. The displays will gradually become beautiful as the confidence grows. They had to do whatever it took to win in the past few games, and I am happy for Komphela that it has finally come.

Let’s get back to Sundowns. Their story is one for the history books. It shows that football is truly a team game – everyone has to buy into the main plan. It started with a dream that their president Patrice Motsepe had to add the Champions League trophy to their cabinet. When Mosimane joined, he bought into that dream and made it his as well. He sold it to the players and after giving them some confidence and the sweet taste of victory with local titles, they started to see the Champions League dream as achievable. They made it clear they wanted to conquer Africa.

The dream is now close to becoming a reality; they can taste it. From the outside it may look like they had it easy, especially after they were re-admitted, through what many would jealously call the back door.

But I can hardly imagine the hard work that went into it. Imagine what it took to get the players to refocus after they had planned for their holidays. It took guts and courage from the entire team to get where they are now.

Now we need more teams to take these continental competitions as seriously as Sundowns and Orlando Pirates have. I have a feeling Downs are going to win it this time.

They work really hard. They have proven that inasmuch as we need skilful players, modern football dictates that those players should also be quick. There is something called “speed of play” which is lacking in many teams in the Absa Premiership. You look at Keagan Dolly, Khama Billiat and Percy Tau, they are technically gifted but what makes them stand out is that they are also quick and mentally strong.

A player may be talented and skilful, be able to eliminate an opponent with relative ease, but if he isn’t speedy enough he won’t make it count. We have so many players who are super-talented, but lack the strong mentality and pace.

Sundowns’ success is good for Bafana as well. It gives the coach a bigger pool of players with international experience. We have, for a long time, made the mistake of thinking that players who shine in the local league can do the same at international level with Bafana. But boy, have we been proven wrong. Most have frozen at that level and failed to produce the same quality at Bafana, but then the fingers unfairly point at the coach.