Africa-Press – South-Africa. Durban – With a 14 point advantage over nearest rivals Orlando Pirates in the Premiership, it will take one of the biggest upsets in South African football to prevent Sundowns from winning a record extending fifth consecutive league title.
Co-coach Rhulani Mokwena says that the club’s preparations for the second half of the season have been good.
“We are trying to make sure that we are working on improving the team and players so that we can improve our final product. That work has continued and the players have responded exceptionally well. We have done work on the pitch to improve certain critical areas of our performance. We played a friendly match against Platinum City Rovers from the NFD and the performance was good,” said Mokwena.
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After having already won the MTN 8 title this season, Sundowns will also be hungry to add the Nedbank Cup and CAF Champions League to their trophy cabinet. The need for added depth in the squad played a role in them signing veteran attacker Bradley Ralani from Cape Town City.
“Ralani’s recruitment brings a lot of question marks and in particular because of his age. In football, the most important thing in recruitment is to bring in the right player. Sometimes the right player is not dependent upon age but because of the needs of the team and how you improve the strength of the team. One way is by training and secondly, you can recruit players. We decided to do that because of the profile of the player that Ralani is. Ralani is what we call an outlier. His numbers suggest that there is a big difference between him and the rest of the players in the PSL,” said Mokwena.
While Ralani will solve problems for Masandawana in the short-term, they also showed intent on developing for the future by signing 25-year-old Teboho Mokoena from SuperSport United. The Bethlehem born Bafana Bafana player established himself as a key player for Matsatsantsa in recent years.
“Mokoena’s recruitment has been met with huge admiration from the club. He represents the new breed of South African footballers that are produced. His professionalism, conduct and personality allows us to look for greater possibilities from a footballing and human perspective. He does great work in terms of looking after the community and in serving the space of people within his communities. We were very happy to be able to welcome him into the team. A lot of people would think he was recruited mainly for defensive reasons but offensively as a central midfielder, he has a greater contribution to make to the team,” said Mokwena.
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