Mamelodi Sundowns co-head coach Manqoba Mngqithi has insisted that his side are the only team in South Africa that could overturn a 2-0 first-leg defeat against Al Ahly.
The Masandawana coach was addressing the media on Thursday morning ahead of Saturday’s second leg against the defending champions.
He expressed confidence that his team can overturn their two-goal deficit, telling his player their are the only Mzansi team who could still upset the Egyptian giants despite losing the first leg.
“Like I said before, we made it hard for ourselves by conceding two goals away from home an don’t scoring one,” Mngqithi told local media.
“We really went their with the mentality to try and win away from home. We did fairly well in all aspects of the game, but unfortunately on the day we made some elementary mistakes, which we cannot dwell much on at this stage, because we have the second leg to focus on.
“In terms of performance, we still believe that we don’t need to improve a lot but minimising the mistakes that we made, we will always have a good chance to get the result that we want.
“We have our confidence in the group of player that we have and I was even telling them yesterday that if there is anyone that has the capacity to come back in this match, it’s Sundowns.
“I told them even if you were to ask me three times, I would not hesitate to say, out of all the teams in the country, I would not hesitate to say ‘overcome a 2-0 deficit’ it’s Sundowns.
“I strongly believe but it’s not going to be easy considering that we have to be ultra-offensive but we have to guard against counter-attacks. We are playing against an astute coach who can play very quiet to make sure he utilises the space behind our defense.
“So we must be on top of our game in our defence, we must be on top of our game in our counter-pressing, we must try to minimise our mistakes to receive the outcome that we want.
“I’m very confident that if we apply ourselves, we don’t make the mistakes that we made – we don’t normally make those kind of mistakes. When you don’t make those kind of mistakes, you win matches.
“I’m still very excited with the way the team performed in Cairo because I don’t think we have ever performed like that away from home.”
Sundowns will face Al Ahly at the Lucas Moripe Stadium on Saturday at 15:00.
