Former Mamelodi Sundowns captain Hlompho Kekana was critical of Masandawana’s play in their goalless draw with Al Ahly in the first first leg of their CAF Champions League semi-final against Al Ahly.
Sundowns prevented the defending champions from scoring but also only created one shot on target themselves.
With the tie evenly poised, Kekana felt his former side didn’t do enough to threaten the Egyptian giants.
“I think this is a match where we can easily say, Al Ahly came with a plan,” he said on SABC1.
“The plan was to drag the match for as long as they can. They didn’t want Sundowns to play in their box and they did exactly that.
“If you could look at the moment of time Sundowns’ players had the ball, it’s really behind their centre-line, that’s where they wanted it.
“Only in the second half with the introduction of Themba [Zwane], Sales and Rayners, that’s when they started stretching the pitch and they had pockets to play.”
Kekana, a former midfielder himself, was especially disappointed with the high amount of sideways passes from Sundowns’ central players.
“But I still believe that the midfielders today played a game that is not up to their standard, simply because if you’re a midfielder at Sundowns try by all means to play those forward passes – whether the low-block, whether there are difficulties against a low-block,” he continued.
“In football language we call that negative pass when we play wide and wide, any midfielder can do that. But the soon as we try to break the line, that’s the difficult pass to play.
“I’ve seen Mamelodi Sundowns, I’ve seen Ribeiro, I’ve seen Tebza play those passes, I’ve seen Allende play those passes together with Jayden [Adams] – not today.
“I thought they played cautiously in the hands of Al Ahly because the more you don’t vary your attack, the more you don’t press on the last line of defence, the better for them because they get time to regroup and to shift across.
“I thought even our build-up was slow. That on it’s own, it played against our team because if you don’t shift the block quick enough you don’t threaten the last line.
“Even when they attack, the amount of time we get when we restart those attacks, we allowed Ashour who was troubling us, as he entered the box he could easily come back and respond.”
