Mamelodi Sundowns coach Manqoba Mngqithi has remained coy on whether Themba Zwane will start the MTN8 semi-final second leg against Stellenbosch FC.
Zwane, 35, has started the first two games under Mngqithi on the bench but came on as an impact sub.
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On Wednesday, the veteran attacking midfielder was introduced in the 73rd minute and Sundowns arguably had their best spell with Mshishi on the pitch.
However, Mngqithi didn’t want to commit whether Zwane had done enough to earn a starting spot in the second leg at Moses Mabhida Stadium.
“I think I’d be going ahead of myself if I’d already start to think of the line-up for the next match when we still have so many training sessions to see what we can get,” he told journalists after the 1-0 first-leg defeat.
“Because the strategy will obviously have to be different and it’s a game where one goal is not enough. It’s a game where I believe we will be a completely different team.
“Sometimes we need results like this in football if you still have a second chance. Because when you’ve been doing well in all the matches, the friendlies and everything that you have played, sometimes it creates an impression that you have an entitlement to get the results.
“Immediately after we conceded the goal we started to see a completely different team. You could see that now we want to get a goal, we are playing and we know what we are trying to do.
“We’ve done this in many instances and we do very well in those moments. But you don’t want those situations by you conceding first. You want the team to immediately start the game with that mentality.
“To be honest, as much as I start to complain about the control, but I think there were a lot of elementary mistakes, we lost the ball cheap where there was not really that much of a stress from the opposition.
“When we started to pick ourselves up, we’ve always looked better. I think we’ve finished the half very well and we started the second half in a very good way in my opinion. We looked like we could get a goal anytime but unfortunately we missed some opportunities that I thought could’ve helped the team.”
