Can the yellow and blue machine’s dominance even be stopped then? asks Zaahier Adams.
LAST season Mamelodi Sundowns won the DStv Premiership for the fourth consecutive time.
Despite a mid-season blip in late April that saw the Brazilians being held by both KwaZulu-Natal teams AmaZulu and Golden Arrows, which sandwiched a defeat to Kaizer Chiefs, Sundowns still eased to the championship with a 13-point cushion.
They’ve lifted the Premiership trophy six times out of the last eight seasons. Last season they scored eight more goals than anybody else and conceded the same number fewer. Their goal difference of 35 was 20 goals superior to their nearest rivals and tonight’s season-opening opponents AmaZulu (5pm kick-off).
Can the yellow and blue machine’s dominance even be stopped then?
“I think our rivals are much stronger. Chiefs are stronger, Pirates are stronger. Swallows are much stronger, having had a very good season last year, and now having had a very good transfer market, signing deals instead of loans,” Sundowns co-coach Rhulani Mokwena said ahead of today’s clash at Loftus Versfeld.
It is easy to think that Mokwena was simply being modest in praising Sundowns’ challengers, for the champions too have bolstered their already-powerful squad with the arrival of Pavol Safranko, Divine Lunga, Neo Maema, Grant Kekana and Thabiso Kutumela at Chloorkop.
Unlike other clubs, Sundowns have the luxury of sourcing talent specific to their needs. Equally, they don’t measure themselves in accordance with their opposition, but rather the lofty standards they continue to set for themselves.
“We have covered certain areas we felt we didn’t have the personnel to play a certain way, and to do things a certain way. We have recruited a left-footed winger because we didn’t have one. There are certain dynamics that we are looking to incorporate that need only a left-footed winger. We have also recruited a No.10 because we felt we didn’t have a player that can play very well in between the lines, who is a No.10 but can play as a No.9 when you have possession.
“So, because we have improved, we look to dominate a football match. That is the way we know how to play. We worked very hard last season to lay down a benchmark in terms of a certain way that we play, and to put in a holistic model that has certain principles in the way we play, and it will be extremely naïve and foolish for us to discard that all over again.
“A lot of the work we put in to create dominance and not just contest football matches is what we have to continue to do.”
The best chance Benni McCarthy’s Usuthu possibly have of staging an early-season upset is that Sundowns are notoriously slow starters to the season. Their engine often takes a few games to warm up before building the momentum that allows them to storm past their opponents during the business end of the competition.
Mokwena, though, quickly put that dream to bed too.
“As a big club, we have a responsibility to win every match. We know that when our minds are right and focused it’s very difficult for people to stop us,” he said.
