Mamelodi Sundowns team against Chippa United at the Loftus Versveld Stadium. Image: BackpagePix.
Who are Sundowns playing next?
DStv Premiership champions Mamelodi Sundowns have continued to dominate locally and on the continent. Who are they playing next, and where?
Mamelodi Sundowns team against Chippa United at the Loftus Versveld Stadium. Image: BackpagePix.
Mamelodi Sundowns supporters have to wait a little while before the next game, the international break is taking over this week and the next one.
MAMELODI SUNDOWNS RESULTS AND NEXT FIXTURE
The club known as Kabo Yellow started the year with a 1-1 draw with Orlando Pirates in Tshwane. That game was followed by a 6-1 win over NB Lamasia in the Nedbank Cup last 32. Sundowns then beat Mauritania’s FC Nouadhibou 2-0 and TP Mazembe 1-0 in the CAF Champions League.
Sundowns’ winning streak also included a 3-0 victory over AmaZulu and a 2-0 win over Chippa United in the DStv Premiership. The last two games were a 1-1 draw with SuperSport United and a 2-0 win over Maritzburg United in the Nedbank Cup.
Moving on, Sundowns will be kicking off the quarterfinals stage of the CAF Champions League. Tanzania’s Young Africans will host the first leg on Saturday, 30 March at 20:00.
RULANI MOKWENA SPOTS THEMBINKOSI LORCH’S PROGRESS
In case you missed it, the 30-year-old Lorch scored a brace for Sundowns against Maritzburg last Sunday. Coach Rulani Mokwena saw it coming long before that.
Speaking to the media last week, Mokwena said Lorch finally started to feel comfortable in the group of his new teammates at Sundowns since the move from Orlando Pirates in January.
“He’s ready now, he’s ready, I see him in the change room,” Mokwena said, as quoted by iDiskiTimes.
“It’s a lot of things. He comes from a team where he’s established the hierarchy because of the number of years, so in the change room, he’s going to position in the dynamics within the group. So he comes into the Sundowns change room, he’s got history and the profile, but he’s got to establish himself in the hierarchy, in the structure, in the dynamics within the group. And, of course, Lorch with his personality. I know because I worked with him, and I know when he’s settled and when he’s not,” the Sundowns coach continued.
“So when he arrives I could see, I look at the body language, I look, and now I can see a little bit more enthusiastic, he’s got a spring on his step. And that’s what I was waiting for, and you can’t rush that,” Mokwena added.
“It’s Mother Nature and it’s the same with Tashreeq [Matthews], it is the same with [Matias] Esquivel. It’s small things, and you see how he interacts with even the ones on top of the food chain; in everything, you’ve got that, and now you see he gets their trust; they accept him into the group,” Mokwena added.
“He’s smiling, he connects the passes in the rondo’s, he’s in the group, he’s trusted, he’s given the ball even in tight spaces. And that is because he has earned their trust. And Tash has done the same already now, Zuko has done the same. You hear it, you see it and you see even when they hand out bibs to each other you, small things that you look for within the group dynamics.
“It’s not about being a good player; they wouldn’t be here if they were not good players, but it’s the smaller things, and those are the things I always look out for, and sometimes those assist the transition of the individuals and for Lorch I think now he is in the core group and that’s what we brought him here for, ” the highly-regarded Sundowns coach concluded.
