Manqoba Mngqithi will stay at Mamelodi Sundowns after the club activated a one-year extension in his contract, iDiski Times learnt.
This publication has it on good authority that Mngqithi has committed himself to the club for the coming season, though the news have not been publicly announced yet.
The former Golden Arrows coach’s contract was running until the end of June, but Sundowns had an option to renew it, which they have activated after Rulani Mokwena recently stated he is happy with his technical team.
“Manqoba is staying put with Sundowns and has committed himself to a new deal with the club,” said the source.
This means AmaZulu, who were interested in his services to rejoin the club, will have to look elsewhere and so are Kaizer Chiefs, whose management he is understood to have impressed in an interview in the past.
Mngqithi, who is the longest serving member in Sundowns’ technical team, arrived at the Tshwane giants midway through the 2013/14 season to be Pitso Mosimane’s assistant coach.
Sundowns, in that season, won the league title for the first time since the 2006/07 campaign.
Mngqithi has since won seven league titles with the club, including this season, and the CAF Champions League in 2016 as well as CAF Super Cup the following season.
The 52-year-old was appointed as co-coach of Sundowns alongside Mokwena ahead of the 2020/21 season following the resignation of Mosimane, who left to take the post of Al Ahly in Egypt at the time.
In their first season as co-coaches, they won the league and last season they lifted the domestic treble, this campaign things changed on the sidelines for Masandawana.
Mngqithi was demoted to Senior Coach, with Steve Komphela promoted to be the first First Team Coach and Mokwena was given the head coaching role in October.
This technical team changes were necessitated after they were torn apart by the vibrant Orlando Pirates in the MTN8 semi-final second leg in the same month, with Soweto giants succeeding Sundowns in both domestic cup competitions this season.
Sundowns said they were not happy with the team’s performances, stating “the changes were necessitated by the poor performances and unconvincing victories” at the time.
Mokwena then turned Sundowns into a monster team, winning the league title in April with seven games to spare, the earliest this has happened in the PSL.
Many of their performances were eye-catching both locally and continental, but that ended without a holy grail after they crashed out of the CAF Champions League in the semi-final against Moroccan giants Wydad Casablanca on away goals rule – leaving the competition unbeaten, while Stellenbosch FC had knocked them out of the Nedbank Cup in the quarter-finals.
The current deal of head coach Rulani Mokwena with Sundowns is also expiring by the end of this month, but it looks like he will also stay at Chloorkop, with a new deal set to be announced soon.
Story by Robin-Duke Madlala (@duke_robin).
