Pitso brands Sundowns as favourites to win Champions League

Pitso Mosimane cheekily described Mamelodi Sundowns as favourites to win the Caf Champions League right after his side, Al-Ahly, beat them 2-0 in the first-leg of their quarterfinal tie on Saturday night in Cairo.

The former Masandawana mentor said Sundowns’ shoe-shine and piano brand of football is good enough to see them claim the most prestigious title in African club football. But of course, Downs would need to be at their very best to overturn the 2-0 result when they meet in the capital city this coming weekend.

ALSO READ: Pitso Mosimanes Al Ahly get the better of Sundowns

“Sundowns are a very good team, you could see the passing and the movement, it is unbelievable,” said Mosimane.

“I’ve said before that they are the favourites to win the Champions League because of the way they play. They play differently from the way I used to make them play. They play pretty football, it is beautiful to watch but football is about results, it’s about the goals and we got the goals and that is what we needed. If you want to go through you need to score the goals,” said “Jingles”, who went on to emphasise how the pressure is on Sundowns.

“This team won three trophies last season. We went to the Fifa Club World Cup and played Bayern Munich so this team can go to Pretoria and get the results. It is going to be difficult but is the pressure on us or on Sundowns? They have to put in everything and we have to respond with a good defence but we should not forget to score. That one goal will be very important, I hope we get it. We are not going to play to keep a clean-sheet only but we have to score.”

His predecessor, Manqoba Mngqithi is more than confident that Downs are capable of titling this tie in their favour.

“The fact we will be playing at home should give us an advantage and we are a team that is capable of scoring a lot of goals. The only set-back is that we conceded two goals, if it was one I would believe that we would be able to come back stronger. We wanted to at least get a goal but I know what our team is capable of,” said Mngqithi.