Mamelodi Sundowns co-head coach Manqoba Mngqithi has discussed Monnapule Saleng’s dummy that sent Andile Jali to the floor in their MTN8 semi-final first leg, saying getting embarrassed is part of football.
Saleng was a surprise inclusion in the Buccaneers line-up at the time, making his 2022/23 debut against the defending champions, but has since been a regular in Jose Riveiro’s side.
He impressed in the match and one particular incident had fans talking after a Saleng dummy dropped Jali to the floor in the first half.
However, Mngqithi insisted Jali can deal with those situations and will likely be itching to set the record straight in the second leg on Saturday.
“Andile is a big boy, he’s not a small boy,” Mngqithi said in his pre-match press conference.
“To be honest, I don;’t think he played bad in the previous match. I just think when we wanted to inject a little bit of intensity we made a choice of taking him out, but it was not necessarily because he had a bad performance.
“When you say he was “humbled”, I think you’re talking about what Saleng did to him, but the truth of the matter is, in football you can expect the same thing, he also did the same thing inside our box and dribbled over legs but the opponents were not “humbled”.
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“It’s football. We must accept sometimes in football that in the line of duty you will either be dribbled or either be embarrassed but that’s the line of duty.
“If you are a teacher you must expect that you might get dirty because of chalk in your hand, and if you are in football you might get injured, you might get dribbled, you might get embarrassed or you might conceded a stupid goal – it happens in football.
“I’m not even worried by what happened to him because I know he’s a very strong boy, a strong character that probably is itching for the next assignment, which is probably be a good thing and plays to our advantage.”
Jali himself also saw the funny side of the dummy afterwards, sharing one of the memes of the incident on his social media channels.
