Onyango urges Sundowns to change Champions League approach

Half-a-dozen years later, Mamelodi Sundowns are still huffing and puffing where it comes to the Caf Champions League and their captain, Denis Onyango, believes it is high team that the club’s management and technical team adopt a different approach if they are to stand a chance to ascend the podium and collect the grandest prize in African intercontinental football.

“It all depends on the mentality of the players and the management because it is a long journey because you have to play the preliminaries which are home and away against a team that you don’t know about,” said Onyango.

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“It was disappointing because the team did well in the group stages, we won with the highest points and then got knocked out by a team that everyone thought we would beat and go to the semifinals. But that is Champions League football for you, it is very different. When you think you are on a high, the team comes and take its chances and they score,” he added.

This season Downs had an almost perfect campaign in the group stages where they collected 16 points, which also saw them beating this season’s losing finalists, Al-Ahly, twice. But they all counted for nothing as they bombed out of the competition in embarrassing fashion as they lost to Petro Atletico.

“The group stages and the knockout stages should be approached differently. It is not an easy tournament to play and win because you need a little bit of luck because we saw how Al-Ahly managed to get to the final, they had all the luck,” said Onyango.

He added: “The management and the technical team should sit and acknowledge that we need to improve in such aspects and go a step further. When we won it in 2016, there were no quarterfinals. So when we played the semifinal final we saw that the next stage was the final and everyone was motivated and the fight was on. It is a little bit difficult now, we just need to adapt now and we will see what happens.”