Ngcongca optimistic they’ll turn it around
Anele Ngcongca believes all is not lost for Mamelodi Sundowns, even though they lost further ground this week in the race to qualify for the Caf Champions League group stages. The Brazilians’ loss at AS Togo-Port on Tuesday night condemned them to the foot of Group C with just two points from three games.
“We let ourselves down. It was a game we could have wrapped up early on in the first half. We all know football is a funny sport and if we don’t take our chances we get punished,” said fullback Ngcongca.
“The group is still open, we have three games which we have to win. We are going back to the drawing board,” he added.
The veteran defender made mention that his coach Pitso Mosimane warned them about how the Togolese would plot against Sundowns: “It was like what the coach said in training that they would hold the last line higher and there would be spaces at the back. We did everything and it was just those small details whereby we had to put the ball at the back of the net, which we didn’t do.”
Downs welcome Togo-Port a week from now at the Lucas Moripe Stadium in Pretoria, and Ngcongca has urged his teammates to have their shooting boots on and make sure they use the advantage of playing at night, in contrast to Togo-Port’s customary early-afternoon games.
“They will be aware of our pace, but for us we want nothing less than a win and hopefully we will have our goal-scoring boots on. A win for us will take us to five points and I don’t know what will happen to other teams,” he said.
“They (Togo-Port) are used to playing at 1pm and now we have got to use the advantage that we are playing at night … but at the end of the day I don’t believe much in that because it is 11 against 11 and they will be fighting and a draw might be (like) a win for them,” Ngcongca added.
Mamelodi Sundowns have a tough task now to make it to the quarterfinals of the 2018 Caf Champions League, after slipping to a 1-0 defeat away from home against AS Port-Togo on Tuesday afternoon. Pitso Mosimane’s men looked sluggish in the Group C clash, and are now left with just two points from their opening three matches, with three games left. Ricardo Nascimento was a bit unlucky as a cross deflected off him, leaving Ayi Hunlede in the clear to score the only goal of the game, but defence is generally a bit more wobbly now than it was when they won the Champions League back in 2016, even though Sundowns did recapture the Absa Premiership title last season.
“My story is linked to that of the players. I had the immense privilege and happiness to experience that as a player 20 years ago, and it was in France as well so it will remain with me forever. But what they have done today is just as big and just as beautiful,” – Didier Deschamps, on the experience of winning the World Cup with France as a player in 1998 and then again as a coach, as beat Croatia 4-2 in the World Cup final in Russia on Sunday.