Ahead of their DStv Premiership fixture on Saturday afternoon Mamelodi Sundowns co-head coach Rulani Mokwena spoke very fondly of Kaizer Chiefs’ metamorphosis this season.
Mokwena was speaking at the Sundowns’ open media day ahead of this afternoon’s crunch game at Loftus Stadium.
Sundowns suffered a shock 1-0 loss to TS Galaxy mid-week, while Chiefs bounced back from their opening weekend defeat, to beat Maritzburg United 3-0.
Mokwena said so much has changed at Naturena in the past few months, and it is a clear that club is heading in a new direction.
“Ja, but there’s a huge metamorphosis,” Mokwena told the media.
“It’s not even a change, it’s like the team has taken a different direction and particularly from the vision that the club you can see has set, when you watch them now, the strategy in the transfer market is also to get younger players like Nyaope [Kamohelo Mahlatsi] and [Dillan] Solomons.
“And then they also promote and give opportunities to Bruce Bvuma, to Mduduzi [Shabalala]. And that is the direction that they’ve taken, and a direction that they haven’t taken in a very, very long time.
“When you look at the last three coaches, as you mentioned, there would have been a huge reliance on players like Rama and Parker, and Mathoho, but it looks like the cycle is changing. It’s changing from how the vision has been set from the top.
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“And therefore that influences a lot more things like the selection of the coach, which is Arthur, and he knows the DNA of the club. He played for the club, he worked in the academy and the youth structures, he worked as an assistant to many of the coaches that you mentioned, that also influences the recruitment policies, because you’ve seen the transfer market now even when there are certain bigger players available, they’ve resorted to going for Yusuf Maart, for an example and [Ashley] Du Preez, who are relatively a lot younger than what would be available for Chiefs in a normal context of a couple of years ago.
“So it’s interesting to see, it’s good for South African football, they’re a big club. They’ve got a good coach, they’ve got an extremely good squad. And the squad that they have now is a squad that is then able to play the game that they speak about, the high octane, aggressive pressing.
“And you see the goals against Maritzburg. If Yusuf Maart doesn’t jump out of midfield and go and be persistent with the press, then maybe there is no mistake and then there is no possibility for Keegan Dolly to score. But the same happened even in the first goal. You look how aggressive the midfield line was in joining the front three. But you need the right profile of players to be able to do that.
“So the vision, the recruitment, the playing methodology style, is good to see that it’s aligned. And we know we’ve got a very difficult game for us on Saturday, but we love difficult games, we love difficult games and we have the necessary experience to be able to deal with difficult matches.”
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