Sundowns coach Mosimane refuses to dwell on club’s recent African success
JOHANNESBURG: “I want to win every day,” a bullish Pitso Mosimane said after Mamelodi Sundowns were crowned CAF Super Cup champions at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday at the expense of TP Mazembe.
The trophy is the second continental title the Brazilians have won under Mosimane, after their CAF Champions League success last year.
The journey to achieving that required a change in mind-set. Mosimane has positioned Sundowns as a club to join to conquer the country and the continent.
Sundowns conquered both last year. They won the league with the most number of points (71) in the 16-team PSL-era before they became African champions. That was the easy part, retaining those trophies will be the hard part.
“The Super Cup is in the trophy cabinet, we move on,” Mosimane said. “We trained the following day (yesterday) after winning it because we have a game against Platinum Stars (tomorrow). We did the same thing after we won the Champions League
“That’s the mentality. We don’t dwell too much on our success. We are constantly thriving to be better than we were yesterday. You don’t have to be that talented (in my team) but you have to work hard.”
At the heart of Sundowns’ success is a high work-rate, from the technical team to the support staff and the players, driven by Mosimane and his obsessive planning. That planning will be put to the test in the next four months as Sundowns will be competing on three fronts – the league, Champions League and Nedbank Cup, just like last season’s league runner’s up Bidvest Wits.
The Brazilians resume their catch-up in the league with a trip to Phokeng to face Stars, who advanced to the first round of the CAF Confederation Cup over the weekend. How these clubs juggle their domestic and continental duties will shape how they finish this season.
“I am also interested to see how Wits are going to deal with this, a 10-hour trip to Cairo, face Al-Ahly and then come back to play the league on Wednesday,” Mosimane said. “It’s not going to be easy, unless you weaken the team against Al-Ahly because you want to win the league.”