Mamelodi Sundowns co-head coach Manqoba Mngqithi says they will look to dominate the game on Saturday against Petro De Luanda, as Masandawana aim to book their place in the CAF Champions League semi-finals.
Sundowns lost 2-1 in the first leg in Angola, but are feeling confident that they can overturn the deficit going into the second leg.
Mngqithi said they will not be looking to change the way they do things, but will be looking to dominate the game at home and get the goals that will book their place in the last four.
“Nothing different to be honest,” Mngqithi said at the pre-match press conference.
“We will stick to our playing concept. We are a team that wants to dominate the field. We are a team that wants to dominate the ball. Dominating the pitch means dominating all duels, area, ground, winning all the battles and one-v-ones, group or team tactics and also dominating the ball with the number of chances created, ball possession, completed passes, box entries and all those things.
“We want to see our team giving us what we are used to. We’ve got our own operations that we normally get in terms of how many big chances do we create in a match. How many passes do we combine in a match, how many box entries, how many assists and all those things.
“We want to dominate the game. And it’s no different, even a match that we play, starting from a 0-0, we always want to score, we always want to win, and this one is no different. Because even here, if we are to go through we need a goal and one goal might be enough to get us through but the truth of the matter is we want to play a very, very high octane game where we will have strong elements of high press, strong elements of quick assured passing game, that extra passing to making sure that we keep the team compact, which will ultimately assist us to be able to counter-attack immediately after we lose possession because when you stretch the pitch, you ultimately create possibilities that after losing possession, you take a little bit longer to reorganise yourselves because the distances are longer.
“So we’ll try to play a very compact game and make their life very difficult. And if we can be at our very best in our high press and make sure that they do not have stability building from the back, half the job is done.
