Sundowns looking to continue dominance over TP Mazembe

Mamelodi Sundowns have always had the upper-hand in meetings with Democratic Republic of Congo giants TP Mazembe, who they have beaten on four occasions in Caf competitions, with the most recent tracing back to 2017 when Downs beat Mazembe by a single goal to nil in the Caf Super Cup clash in Pretoria.

Masandawana are favourites to beat The Ravens in Lubumbashi in the third round of Group B action of the Champions League.

Sundowns, meanwhile, have not dwelled much on Mazembe’s shortcomings in the competition as they have been struggling to find the back of the net in the last two games against Al-Hilal and CF Belouizdad.

Instead, Sundowns are focusing more on stretching their 21-game unbeaten run in all competition as they last lost a match in October last year in a MTN8 tie against eventual finalists Bloemfontein Celtic.

The Brazilians, however, claim to have done their due diligence on the five-time African champions as they spent about a week in the DRC, plotting and planning against Mihayo Kazembe’s side.

“They are an interesting team and they are very strong defensively. We watched their few matches. They played the Congolese derby, they played Al-Hilal and Belouizdad,” said Bafana Ba Style’s co-head coach Rhulani Mokwena.

“In relation to what we have seen, we now know better and they usually play a 4-4-1-1 formation and it would be interesting because we still have to tactically activate ourselves and make sure that we are ready for a team that has got really complex personalities and they can be aggressive,” he added.

Mokwena continued: “They push the wingers and the full-backs very high but they can also be very conservative and sit on the block and play counter attacking football because they have got very fast players. It will be very interesting to see what kind of personality they will adopt because they need the three points more than us.”

The match is set to kick-off at 3pm at the Frederic Kibassa Maliba Stadium on Saturday.

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