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Coach Rulani Mokwena says Brazilians have to flirt with the competition so much it chooses them over the North Africans
Should he get bored with being a football coach, Rulani Mokwena would do well to venture into the dating business. The Mamelodi Sundowns coach illustrated a hidden talent in the art of wooing the as he delivered one of his trademark analogies during a post-match media conference the other night.
As he tries to emulate his predecessor Pitso Mosimane and bring the CAF Champions League title home to Chloorkop, the young coach likened the pursuit of continental glory to courting a potential marriage partner. It takes time, patience, perseverance and a lot of dates - he explained.
Mokwena will on Friday evening lead Sundowns against Esperance in the semifinal second leg of the continent’s premier knockout competition needing to at least win 1-0 to stand a chance of reaching the final. That result will force the match into a shoot-out from the penalty spot with the aggregate score at 1-1 after Esperance won the first leg 1-0. A 2-0 scoreline will see the South African champions automatically winning 2-1 on aggregate.
On Tuesday night, he led a second-string Sundowns team to a 2-1 win over Sekhukhune United at Loftus Versfeld to leave the Brazilians needing just two more victories to retain their DSTV Premiership title. Addressing the post-match media conference, Mokwena was at pains to make people understand that winning the Champions League was a tough undertaking.
“I just get the feeling that people think ‘Aah they’ll just win the Champions League’. It’s a very difficult competition,” he said, explaining for the umpteenth time this season that a team has got to have a relationship with the competition to eventually come right.
‘’When Jose Mourinho spoke of football heritage, watch the European Champions League. You don’t have to go far, Real Madrid versus Man (Manchester) City (who met in the quarterfinal of Europe’s premier club knockout competition in the past two weeks). Man City were by far the best team over both legs - by far (yet they were knocked out). But they’ve got no heritage,” he said of the English team that only recently joined Europe’s top clubs thanks to their having been bought by the oil-rich Sheikh Mansour.
“Real Madrid have this obsession with the competition and then the football gods say ‘Oh, we know this guy. This one always buys us flowers and chocolates and in difficult moments when the relationship is not so strong. This one will never stray from us, he’s close. And so what does it do? it favours that.”
He wants Sundowns to be like Madrid in terms of their relationship with the CAF Champions League.
“That’s the position we have to get to, where we are flirting with the Champions League so much that it decides to leave the North African teams and say ‘aaah, I’ve found a new husband’.”
He knows exactly how to do that, he says.
“We have to take it on the dates all the time. Semi-final; semi-final; final, semi-final, final, we keep taking it out on dates. That’s what we have to do. Eventually, it will say ‘Yes, I do. We can now go to the altar’. Eventually, you are the husband.”
No doubt, Mokwena would love for it (champions League) to say yes to this campaign. First, though he must take it to the final and that will require Sundowns to be much sharper and more incisive up front Friday night than they were in Tunisia last weekend. More importantly, they have to be impenetrable defensively so as to not allow Esperance to score.
Do that wooing right and Mokwena’s days of CAF Champions League ‘bachelorhood’ would be near the end.