Downs captain on ‘Jingles’ & CAF Champions League

We bought into it

Hlompho Kekana – Sundowns captain

“The Champions League space is a space the coach had always liked. You could see that he was going to be an African champion one day, because when he was with SuperSport, he was in the Champions League (group stages). And when he was at Bafana Bafana, I could tell that they let him go before getting to where he really wanted to get to as a person. I feel he had plans to make Bafana Bafana a strong team that would compete with the best countries. But it was unfortunate for him to leave at a time when he had big plans for the national team. In the first year we played with the coach in the Champions League at Sundowns, we were knocked out by TP Mazembe (before the group stages). He told us that’s where we need to measure and test ourselves as a team if we want to grow. I remember the TP Mazembe coach at the time spoke about how we were the team that gave them a tough time in the competition that year. And if you check, we played against them in the preliminary rounds, but they were talking about us as if we had knocked them out or we had given them problems in the semifinals. I think the coach got motivation from that. When he presented it to us, we started to believe as players that we belong in that space. He mentioned that we play against international players, so if we want to get tested, then we should play in the Champions League. So, we bought into it, because he was talking based on facts. When he used to analyse team by team, you would see that there’s about eight foreign internationals in a team. Then, as a player, you can see that you need to be competing in that space. It’s a big stage to be playing on and it gives you a chance to go and play at the (FIFA) Club World Cup. He really loves the Champions League.”