Pitso Mosimane coach of Mamelodi Sundowns (Pic Sydney Mahlangu/BackpagePix)
If it were up to Mamelodi Sundowns head coach Pitso Mosimane, he would adopt Liverpool’s style of fielding a junior team in England’s edition of the Nedbank Cup, but because this would be against the club tradition and something rather taboo in South African football, “Jingles” says he will not.
READ: Pitso reveals news that will frustrate some Sundowns stars
Mosimane added that there is also no need for him to rotate his team when they take on SuperSport United in the fifth edition of the Tshwane derby tomorrow night at Loftus Versfeld.
“Can I do what Juergen Klopp does? Can I play the Under-23s to play the Nedbank Cup against SuperSport? No because it is not in the culture of the team because our people love the cups and if the cups are not important, then why did we win the Telkom Knockout? It shows that cups are important,” said Mosimane.
“We don’t have that culture in South Africa and I wish I could do that. I don’t know how our people would react and I don’t have a mandate from the board to do that. Klopp is the boss at Liverpool and he can do whatever he wants. I don’t know if Sundowns is ready for that,” Mosimane added.
Mosimane says he has the duty to be fair to his players, particularly those who have been warming the bench.
“It would be good to put the youngsters but we have to understand that there are also players who are on the bench and what will I be saying to them when people are jumping the queue? I need to respect those players who have been waiting for their chance to play. Also, it is not easy to do it that way, because if it backfires, will it be okay to say ‘we were just playing the youngsters so it is okay.”
“Most of the time when we rotate the team it is because of the heavy program and to be honest, the program has not been heavy for us lately to say we need to rest players. It has been a good weekend-to-weekend program and we are well-rested at this point in time so we are okay.”
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