AmaZulu caretaker coach Ayanda Dlamini says he wasn’t too worried about how Themba Zwane and Gaston Sirino were going to combine together because it happened in areas where he planned them to be.
Zwane and Sirino, when they are dancing on the ball, are two players that can cause a huge amount of damage to any team.
The duo showed when Zwane won the ball, disposing Rally Bwalya of the ball in the first half before hooking the ball away to Sirino while on the floor, who laid it to Bongani Zungu to score the opener.
With how Sundowns were controlling one thought the floodgates would open up for them, especially after Peter Shalulile had scored the second.
But Usuthu stunned Sundowns somewhat, scoring two late goals through Ramahlwe Mphahlele and Junior Dion to leave the game ending in an exciting 2-2 draw.
“You will be surprised, if I tell you that – Zwane, Sirino and the young boy [Ntando Nkosi], who was playing as an eight and Haashim Domingo, they were receiving the balls exactly where we wanted them to be,” said Dlamini after the match.
“Exactly where we knew they would never hurt us because we were very compact and Zwane had to drop to get the ball very deep or he had to go wide.
“That is what we wanted, because if they can have combinations in front of our goals, like the first goal they scored, it was from our mistake.
“But we were not worried about Zwane being on the ball, Domingo on the ball, as long as they were in the places that we wanted them to be.
“Even Sirino, when he started, he started as a second striker and the diamond shaped in the midfield. But he was always dragged out of position because the space was very thin in between our defensive lines.
“We were not worried about that. But after we made a mistake and they scored, we had to change the plan now because you can’t sit back when you are down, that’s why we started pressing high.”
While Dlamini tactically stunned Sundowns to come back, his predecessor Romain Folz cut a lonely figure in the box, ensuring that he didn’t want to be seen. Folz was moved aside by Usuthu at the beginning of last month as his ideas weren’t bearing any fruits.
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It was the second time Usuthu had given Sundowns something to think about with Dlamini in charge, having also handed them an exciting 4-3 win in the early stages of the 2020/21 season.
