Extra time took the steam out of Sundowns

Manqoba Mngqithi (right) could not hide his disappointment after Mamelodi Sundowns were bombed out of the Nedbank Cup by top-flight rookies Tshakhuma Tsha Madzivhandila on penalties at the weekend.

What frustrated Mngqithi the most is that the match went into extra-time and they still couldn’t win it – he says he would have rather lost the match in regulation time, as the extra 30 minutes have added unnecessary mileage to the workload of already overstretched players.

The semifinal was Sundowns’ third game last week, having played against Chippa United on the Monday and hammered Orlando Pirates 4-1 on Thursday evening in the Nedbank Cup quarterfinals.

What TTM did was to prove that Sundowns could be outplayed in certain periods of the match and could be made to chase for the ball as the Venda-based side had their fair share of posession at Loftus Versfeld.

It was the second time that Downs had failed to score at home against Tshakhuma, as they also played to a goalless draw at the start of the season.

“We are all devastated and we wish things could have turned out differently but we fully understand what is expected of us,” said Mngqithi.

“If we knew we were going to lose, it would have been better to lose in the 90 minutes, considering that our programme has got so much and we have another big match on Wednesday (tomorrow).

“Our players know they have a responsibility in all the fixtures and we are playing all of these matches because of their success.”

Sundowns will need to quickly lick their wounds as they prepare to fly down to Durban and take on a high-flying AmaZulu side in the DStv Premiership tomorrow.

Six points separate the two sides, who played out a crazy 4-3 thriller in favour of Downs in the first round.

“It is not going to be an easy one. Our rehabilitation and conditioning team will make sure that our players are in a good space,” added Mngqithi.