Pitso not taking anything for granted
● Pitso Mosimane has warned against the idea that Mamelodi Sundowns will easily run over all the teams they will play in the Nedbank Cup and nine remaining Absa Premiership matches of the season that resumes this week.
The Brazilians will be gunning for both titles to complete a treble as the Premier Soccer League teams return after a fourand-a-half-month mid-season hiatus forced by the coronavirus pandemic.
Mosimane’s team restart their campaign with a semifinal clash against Bidvest Wits at Orlando Stadium on Saturday, two days before they host Orlando Pirates in another intriguing league tie at Dobsonville Stadium, their temporary home, on August 11.
“For me it’s always about winning the next match, that’s my attitude,” Mosimane told the Sunday Times yesterday.
“Some people say you’ve won this and you’ve won that, so what else inspires you? I always say top coaches win everything. We’ve done the treble; in fact we won four (2015-16 season).
“In those nine league games the big clubs (Pirates and log leaders Kaizer Chiefs) are coming. Who can get maximum points in the remaining matches? I don’t think anybody can really.
“The league is not in our hands, it’s in Chiefs’ hands. They don’t need anybody’s favour. All they have to do is win their remaining (eight) matches and then they’re champions.”
On their meeting with fourth-placed Bucs and Chiefs in matches that can define their season, Mosimane said it could be wrong to look at those games as the only ones that will decide who wins the league title.
“Anybody can win the league, even SuperSport United (third-placed) can,” he said.
“Football is not the way we say it, football is on the pitch and it’s played on the pitch; and there it is a different story.”
The Brazilians have won the Telkom Knockout this season but Mosimane, who has won four league titles, two domestic cups, a Caf Champions League and Super Cup, since joining the Brazilians towards the end of 2012, wants the two trophies to help his club celebrate its 50th anniversary in style.
Mosimane said winning a third successive league title, the tenth for Sundowns in the PSL era, will mean a lot to him coming a few months after extending his contract at Chloorkop by a further four years.
“I remove my heart from being emotional about all these talks, it’s our supporters who are on that,” he said. “Same as Chiefs, it’s their 50th anniversary and they’d like to celebrate that with winning the league.
“But my job is to make sure I remain sober-minded and the players must get into my mode of knowing that yes we have to deliver, yes we can, but we can’t be reckless and be all over the place and planning the party without winning the games.
“But with us having not played in four months, having not played even a friendly match, it’s going to be very difficult. People don’t understand how we’ve been training and how we’ve been affected by Covid.
“People say just win, we want the party. They think it’s easy. No, it’s not easy. People don’t understand and they don’t know the stresses that the players have.”
All 16 PSL and 16 GladAfrica Championship teams will go into a biologically safe environment the PSL has set up in Gauteng in the coming week. Mosimane encouraged the league to test the players on a regular basis inside the bubble to ensure everybody is safe.
The coach confirmed that one player from his team tested positive when they started training last month and has since recovered.