Mamelodi Sundowns coach Manqoba Mngqithi has addressed the topic of showboating and explained why he would substitute his players if they would start with tricks after taking the lead in games.
Instead, Mngqithi prefers for his side to show their dominance or superiority by scoring more goals, thus respecting the opponents more instead of trying to “make a fool” of them via showboating.
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The Sundowns coach was asked why South African teams tend to not finish off their opponents, and perhaps even relax a bit in games and bring out the tricks after taking the lead in match.
“It requires a very big paradigm shift, because in our in our society, we have accepted that after we have taken a lead, probably it’s an opportunity for show boating and doing all these tricks, and it’s acceptable in the society,” he said in his pre-match press conference for the Carling Knockout final.
“Everybody thinks you have done enough when you have won the match, and you have also had some nice tricks and made fools of the opponents.
“But personally, I regard opponents as opponents and as not as enemies. And as opponents I always believe you want to beat your opponent, so that next time he knows who are you – not as an enemy, but as an opponent.
“No, I don’t want to make a laughing stock of you. You will see most of my players, they hardly do all these tricks after we’ve taken a lead, because I can substitute you immediately.
“Because for me, what excites me is to see the ball touching the net. I like that, and I’ve always been like that from time in memorial.
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“I think the reason why I became a football coach is because I want to influence a team to try and create a lot of scoring opportunities and score a lot of goals, and I get excited when a game has got a lot of goals – no matter how good the game can be, sometimes, because I’ve been in football for so many years, where you can dominate the game and look so good, everybody’s excited you were leading 1-0 and in the last minute, the opponent scores. It’s 1-1, and then what?
“So, for me, goals are the determining factor on the result, and thus we should be targeting to make sure that we play to score as many goals. And if we say we are better than the opponent, it’s because we can score more than them.
“I don’t think possession is enough without creating a lot of scoring opportunities, because when you look at that possession, sometimes it’s in all the wrong areas. You’ve you had so much possession because the opponents were sitting deep and you were playing in front of them and enjoying all the time, having as many passes in front of them. But that does not mean you managed to break down their strategy that they had brought up to make sure that they don’t concede a lot of goals.
“And then as a coach, you must say, ‘what did I bring to try and make sure that even when they were trying to put a low block or whatever, I still managed to force my way and score as many goals as possible’.”
