Mamelodi Sundowns co-coach Rulani Mokwena has praised three players for their performances after the 2-0 win over Kaizer Chiefs in the DStv Premiership encounter on Sunday afternoon at Loftus Stadium.
Grant Kekana, who opened the scoring, looks well-settled since arriving at the club, while his centre-back partner Rushine De Reuck has shown also shown an impressive performance.
Mokwena had fond words for both of them as Chiefs failed to break the deadlock on Sunday.
“The one thing about the two of them is they just love defending. The orthodox-type of centi-halves you don’t normally find them in football,” Mokwena said after the match.
“I think the Porto-type now left are (Giorgio) Chiellini and (Leonardo) Bonucci, centre-halves that really love grafting and that’s what you have with Granti and Rushi, always looking to better their performance, always willing to learn and improve. And kudos to them for another very good team contribution.
“But as I said, even earlier, big team performance, everybody was willing to run, fight and give their best for the team, including the substitutes.
“So it’s very difficult to single out any individual but very strong performance from Rushine and very strong performance from Grant and not always easy, particularly after an international break.”
Peter Shalulile who also added a goal to his tally also received special praise from coach Mokwena.
“You run out of superlatives. I think this guy is charged by Duracell,” he said about Shalulile.
“The reality is Peter is a team player, he sacrifices, pushes and puts himself on the line for the team. We say to him, as long as you are at service for Mamelodi Sundowns, everything else will fall into place.
“We trust him to trust every single one of our players. And we know that not just in relation to goals and assists there is a lot more to Peter. The movement to create space to pull out defenders, the high press schemes, sometimes a little bit complicated and different, Peter gives us that. “
“As long as he continues to do that, maybe the best thing is to try and find the most expensive cotton wool that we can wrap him around because he just continues to learn and run and run and he’s like this even at training.
“Top lad, top human being. We are just fortunate to have not just Peter but a group of great human beings in our team.”
