Mamelodi Sundowns Co Head Coach Manqoba Mngqithi says he was pleased to welcome back captain Hlompho Kekana during their 3-1 CAF Champions League win over Jwaneng Galaxy on Tuesday.
Mngqithi says it wasn’t the most exciting game for him as a coach, but he was pleased that Sundowns did their job, securing a 5-1 aggregate win over their Botswana opponents, that clinched their qualification to the group stages.
“Overall I think we did the business,” Mngqithi said after the game.
“It was not the most exciting game to watch for me as a coach, but I was encouraged that (today) at least we managed to score three goals, even though I believed we could have scored more.”
“But we are still not as clinical as one would like in front of goals.”
Mngqithi was also happy to give captain Kekana some game time for the first time in a few weeks. Kekana came off the bench for the last quarter of the game.
He says giving the 35 year old some rest was important, as they want him to be fresh for the busy period ahead.
“It was also nice to see the captain coming back (today), after a very long lay off, and I believe he came in and showed some freshness. It was interesting to see him, though the opponents were already tiring off, it was interesting to see ‘Keke’ back, because the reason we have not been playing him, is we want him to be fresh.”
“He may not like it, that he’s not playing regularly, but we believe he might be very important for us going forward if he’s fresher, than continuing and killing him, and killing his pace, killing the excitement of playing the game, but the few minutes that we gave him (today), he looked very interesting, and we are looking forward to see what’s going to happen in the near future.”
