Mamelodi Sundowns head coach Rulani Mokwena has insisted that one of his biggest disadvantages as coach is that he never played at professional level and didn’t experience certain emotions and situations of the game.
Mokwena’s side beat Cr Belouizdad 2-1 at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday, after winning the first leg 4-1 in Algeria last week.
After the game, Mokwena was asked how he motivated his players to go again in the second leg, despite carrying a comfortable three-goal lead into the game.
Mokwena admitted that he needed to rely on his players a little bit in terms of how to approach such a situation because he’s never experienced it himself.
“One of my biggest disadvantages is that I’ve never played professional football,” he said.
“Some of these things I’ve not lived. So I have huge expectations but from a psychological perspective I can only imagine how difficult it is.
“I have a reliance on speaking to the players about [the game]. I have to speak, I have to feel, I have to sense where they are and what they think about the game and then try to be emotionally very, very sober.
“The feeling I got in the first half before they scored was that we were closer to scoring than they were. I thought we were in control.
“The only disappointment of the first half is that the first five minutes after they scored, I think emotionally we were rattled a little bit
“Fortunately we didn’t bleed a lot around the box because if you bleed a lot around the box against North African sides, they get free-kicks, they get corners and then they go for the second and that could’ve complicated issues.
“But after that we then stabilised ourselves again, we showed very good leadership and the senior players took charge of the game again and [we scored] a very good goal from Mshishi.”
Sundowns completely turned the game around when Thapelo Morena scored the second goal shortly after the break.
