Pitso Mosimane has challenged Kaizer Chiefs as they look for glory this season. Photo:
Mamelodi Sundowns coach Pitso Mosimane has challenged Kaizer Chiefs to “come run in my lane” if they are serious about dethroning his team at the pinnacle of South African football.

While Amakhosi are currently at the summit of the Absa Premiership standings with the Brazilians in second place, ‘Jingles’ is of the view that Chiefs seeing themselves as their adversaries is actually a fallacy.

After all, he reasons, Sundowns are back-to-back league champions and have won the CAF Champions League and have been competing in the continent’s premier club knockout competition annually for the last six years, while Chiefs last won the championship four seasons ago and are non-entities in African football.

“You have to run the same Comrades Marathon and then you can tell me about Comrades Marathon. As long as you don’t run this Comrades Marathon, you don’t understand it because you don’t know that you are forced to make changes. You don’t know how to make eight changes. You don’t know how is the mood of Telkom Knockout compared to this game. This game, it is a difficult game. You come from a Telkom game where you’ve just reached the final and the mood is high. You can get too excited and trip. Sometimes it helps to put those who were not part of the Telkom. They want their own celebration and they did well,” Mosimane explained after his team beat AmaZulu 2-0 on Tuesday night.

Sundowns are currently in the group stage of the CAF Champions League. The other local team still involved in continental competition is Bidvest Wits, who are competing in the round robin stage of the CAF Confederation Cup.

“Only two teams can propose the changing of fixtures in the league. Only two teams. It is us and Bidvest Wits. No-one else,” said Mosimane.

“The rest are well-rested teams. They play every Sunday. They can do the shopping on Wednesday and they can fetch children from school. We don’t fetch children from school because we are in camp,” he quipped, adding that well-rested teams cannot deem themselves to be in competition with the likes of his Sundowns, who play at least three times a week and travel extensively.

“Know your space, know where you are and play in that lane. That’s all. Come to the fast lane and only then can you talk about the fast lane. Don’t talk from the slow lane. Take the right lane, not the left lane, and when people come, tell them to move away. That’s the lane and then we can talk about driving fast.”

As the league is not even at the halfway stage, Mosimane says there’s no need for people to get excited.

“May determines everything. The fat lady sings in May. At the moment we are in a process. At the moment the trophy is in Chloorkop. We are defending it. You have to come and take it. For us, it is 19 games to go. It is a long way.

“We’ve had our slump. We haven’t been there (on top of our game). You know we are not yet there but slowly we are coming back. Every team hits a slump. The question is how long is your slump going to be. How do you handle that because you’ve been on a honeymoon.”

@minenhlecr7


The Star

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