Pretoria – Mamelodi Sundowns captain Teko Modise has challenged his teammates to have their efforts resonate with their fat contracts.
The Downs captain said players from the expensively assembled side have to up their game and end the trophy drought that has been Achilles Heel for the previous four years.
“This season it’s now or never. It’s tiring to always talk about the same thing “we will, we will” and the next thing we don’t deliver. We need to justify our contracts at Sundowns. We need to justify being Sundowns players. If other teams can do it with less quality than we have clearly there’s problem within us as players,” said Modise.
Lack of commitment and consistency, poor tactics, favouritism and poor performances have been some of Sundowns’ undoing in their efforts to win silverware. Modise said the Brazilians have tried to right their wrongs and is confident that the his teammates will come alright this season.
“Slowly it’s showing in our games with the way we play. We play as a team and I just hope one day it will show off and we win games,” said the Bafana Bafana midfielder.
So far things have not been smooth for Sundowns. The midweek loss to Kaizer Chiefs, escalated problems that they have had defensively. Before that they had conceded three goals in a 3-3 draw with Moroka Swallows in the MTN8 first leg semifinal last weekend. This Sunday they travel to Soweto, where they will meet Swallows in a return leg of the competition at the Dobsonville Stadium. And the Brazilians will be under pressure to deliver.
“We know the pressure that we have. We know the pressure that the coach has. We also want to justify the contracts that we have with the team. We don’t want to be a part of those players that came but never did or delivered anything for the team,” said Modise.
He said Downs have to progress to the final of the MTN8 at the expense of Swallows.
“We know what we are capable of but we just need to show it on the pitch. That’s what we are working on. We just hope that on Sunday we are going to work extra hard than Swallows and score more goals than them,” said Modise. – Pretoria News