Rulani Mokwena still hurting over Sundowns’ MTN8 loss against Pirates

Mamelodi Sundowns head coach Rulani Mokwena is still hurting over the MTN8 semi-final loss against Orlando Pirates.

Sundowns missed out on clinching the first silverware of the 2022/23 season after being knocked out of the two-legged MTN8 semi-finals by Pirates, who went on to lift the trophy.

They edged AmaZulu 1-0 in the final at Moses Mabhida Stadium in November.

RULANI MOKWENA STILL BAFFLED

Despite the Buccaneers seemingly outplaying Masandawana in the top-eight competition, Mokwena still doesn’t know how his charges lost to José Riveiro’s troops.

“The challenge is that both teams play very differently, with different strengths,” Rulani Mokwena told the media.

“I don’t want to go too much into it because the follow-up question might be, what’s the starting lineup of Pirates.

“They have a lot of strengths to be aware of, they are a team big team, and big teams, of course, have very good players.

“And when you mention Saleng, you can easily say the element of Kermit Erasmus starting in the MTN8 was also a big thing for us.

“Because maybe we might not have expected him to start, [Ndabayithethwa] Ndlondlo starting in the first leg and having a performance that he had was a big element.

“Tactically, we always try to manipulate certain things, and we’ll do that again for this match. We have certain schemes that we work on.

“We have certain positional adaptations, not really changes but adaptations. We don’t change too much for an opponent.

“I think for them they will be looking at the last three games with keen interest because, for sure, the Carling Black game was a very good performance for us.

“Especially based on the game that we lost [against Pirates] in Polokwane and then the 0-0 draw in Orlando Stadium.

“I watched that game, and I still do not understand why we lost the MTN8, both first leg and second leg,” added the Soweto-born tactician.

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