Can we hope for better derbies in the future?

The Soweto derby will always be closely contested and this time around it is good that we saw goals rather than before, where we would see 0-0 draws, where people would say we created chances but didn’t score.

But this time they created chances and scored, even though it was an own goal for Orlando Pirates. It is good for football because the game is all about scoring goals, whether it is a draw or a loss. It gives us hope that in the future we won’t have those boring derbies anymore.

Moving on to Mamelodi Sundowns’ defeat at the hands of Cape Town City, it is understandable given the number of games they played over the past week.

It affected them, especially when they play against an attacking team, a team that is close to their philosophy, because City play similarly to Sundowns. So when you play a team that matches you pound-for-pound, you need a break in-between, whereby you can prepare better and have your players well rested.

They played over the weekend, they played on Tuesday, and they played on Friday. With the travelling and facing a team that had more time to recover, it took its toll.

We saw what happened to the very same City when they won the Telkom Knockout in Polokwane, they had to fly back to Cape Town and play Platinum Stars – and they lost heavily. That is what happened to Sundowns.

But we cannot take credit away from City. Losing that game dented Sundowns’ title hopes a bit, but the beauty about that is that they still have games in hand.

SuperSport United are the silent killers this season, they have now gone 18 league games without defeat. There is not much pressure on the team because the focus is not on them. And I will attribute that to having a worldclass coach in Stuart Baxter. Also, they have mature players who are able to handle all types of pressure and their experience enables the younger ones to stay focused.

The determination of the senior players now is starting to pay off, and that can only be a sign of a team that is destined to succeed. When the team is affected by injuries, they don’t drop points and that tells us they are a force to be reckoned with.

If you check, we can roughly say about 90% of their players have experienced national team football, which just emphasises that we can’t buy experience. And what they do is that they blend experience with their young players, who then learn how to get their match temperament at the right level.

Today they play Pirates, and the way Bucs have been playing

their last two matches, you see so much determination. They appear to be more organised.

Taking into account what happened in November with SuperSport’s 6-1 win over Pirates, apart from the game plan that these two teams will come up with and considering the history of Bucs – when they play against a team that humiliated them in the previous encounter, they always rise to the occasion.

That gives me the confidence that Pirates will be going out there to make sure they end SuperSport’s good run. They will clearly aim for revenge and will want to win in order to erase all those bad memories. It is without a doubt going to be a tough match, but the energy and determination of Pirates means that they should hold the upper hand.