Lakay Sets Record Straight On City Move

On loan Cape Town City defender Lyle Lakay has clarified some points about his loan move from Mamelodi Sundowns to City, insisting he wasn’t forced out of the club.

Lakay completed a loan deal on Deadline Day last week after agreeing to head to the Mother City for one campaign, as initially reported by iDiski Times.

The move came as a surprise to many after Lakay was named DStv Premiership Defender of the Season for his fine performances in 2021/2022. However, in the beginning of the 2022/23 campaign, Lakay had somewhat fallen down the pecking order at Chloorkop and would’ve faced more competition in his position after the arrival of Terrence Mashego.

Earlier this week, Lakay spoke about his move in an interview, trying to explain his situation but he now told iDiski Times there were one or two points tweeted out of context afterwards.

“People have been talking, I did an interview in the week and then I think some of the words were misinterpreted and what I said in the interview wasn’t what was tweeted [about],”he told iDiski Times on Wednesday.

“It sounded like I was talking against the club and that’s not it because Sundowns is still my mother club.

“[What happened] I was offered to City and then obviously when I found out, as I said, I didn’t expect it [initially] and then it happened. When I thought about everything, like I said, City is an ambitious team and I looked at my chances of playing [at Sundowns] and all those things.

“I agreed to it, I said yes, I wasn’t forced. I could’ve stayed, I could’ve fought for my place, but but there were certain factors and reasons that made me decide to come to Cape Town City.”

Lakay also insisted the deal didn’t just surprise him from one day to the other because he had heard already before that the clubs were in talks before they agreed to the deal last week Tuesday.

“I got the call on Tuesday evening to say thumbs up, the deal has been completed, I have to fly down to Cape Town the Wednesday morning for medicals,” he explains.

“It didn’t just happen, I obviously had to agree before because it happened the week before where the clubs started speaking and there were talks. Obviously I had to wait for the answer for them to come to an agreement. So the [final] call came the Tuesday night to say ‘everything agreed, thumbs up’.

“It was not like it just happened. I wanted to clarify that because now it looked like I was speaking against the club, painting a bad picture, which is not the situation.”

Story by Sinethemba Makonco (@Makonco_M).

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