Downs ‘right up there’
FAITHFUL SERVANT RATES CURRENT CROP AS ONE FOR THE AGES Champions League campaign given top priority this year.
For much of the past 30 years, Angelo Tsichlas has enjoyed an association with Mamelodi Sundowns in almost all and any capacity one could imagine – from the bucket-carrying assistant coach to Mario Tuani, acting coach, interim coach, team general manager, joint-owner, shareholder and currently the technical adviser to club billionaire boss Patrice Motsepe.
Oh yes, it should not be overlooked that at times he has also acted as the team dietician and caterer and served up an aromatic cup of Greek coffee, with this particular talent stemming from the country of his birth.
Tsichlas, therefore, can be considered particularly well qualified to rate the quality and prowess of the club’s greatest teams and compare them with the club’s current side, who are in the midst of an unbeaten sequence of 18 games in all competitions and in a commanding position at the top of the Premier League table.
“In claiming nine league titles in the period I have been with the club – including a record six Premier League honours,” said Tsichlas, “Sundowns have had two combinations I would rate among the best South Africa has produced.
“The first,” he added, “won three NSL league titles during the early part of the 1990s and included such greats of South African football as Harris Choeu, Harold Legodi and Ernest Chirwali, while the other special line-up annexed three PSL league titles in the latter part of the 1990s with players of the exceptional authority and skill of Cameroonian kingpin Roger Feutmba, the Masinga brothers, Zane Moosa and Sizwe Motaung to the fore.”
What has Tsichlas drooling at the mouth is the prospect that the present side, which seems destined to win the club’s seventh Premier League championship with a little to spare, could well join in prowess, skill and entertainment value the Brazilians’ two exceptional combinations of the past.
“I detect from the way the team is performing the memories I have of those two great past combinations,” he said, “not only for the talent and success, but also the single-minded purpose, unity and entertaining brand of football.
“Much of the attention has been focused on what has been termed our ‘CBD’ frontline of goalscorers in Colombian Leonardo Castro, Zimbabwean Khama Billiat and Keagan Dolly,” added Tsichlas. “They have certainly shown they mean business and earned the Central Business District tag through combining the first letter of their names.
“But it is the togetherness in application and thought of all 11 players – no matter who is selected – that is the real strength of the team, with coach Pitso Mosimane and his assistants also striking the right chords.”
This weekend the Brazilians begin their Caf Champions League campaign in a fi rst-leg preliminary round game against Zimbabwe’s Chicken Inn, with success in Africa’s premier club competition a top priority in 2016, said Tsichlas.