Mnqithi previews Royal AM clash, touches on Saavedra injury

Mamelodi Sundowns will travel to Durban to play their final DStv Premiership encounter against Royal AM on Saturday afternoon. With one game left to play of their 2021/22 campaign, Masandawana have achieved their first target of successfully defending their Championship title in the Premier Soccer League. Mamelodi Sundowns coach Manqoba Mnqithi has previewed the game.

Mnqithi is keen to get positive results against their opponents that they have already defeated on two occasions this season. “The game against Royal AM is definitely going to be very tough. They’ve got a lot of very exciting players, and the fact that we beat them in the Nedbank Cup makes them even more motivated for this match, and besides that they’ve changed the squad a lot from the team that they were using before. They even changed the approach to a certain extent, they are no longer building from the back a lot ever since they played that match against us.”

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“They’ve conceded a goal from a high press, so now they’ve been playing a lot of long balls and they’ve been very direct in their play with two strikers and one 10 which is [Ndumiso] Mabena. When we played them they were playing [Mxolisi] Macuphu uptop alone with two number 10’s which could be a [Teboho] Potsane, Mabena or [Victor] Letsoalo behind, but now they are putting two up top so they’ve really gone direct, but they have not actually had the results that they wanted.

“We are playing against a very sophisticated team that we know has got a lot to offer, and we have to go there with a very good mind because we know our supporters will be there so it’s very important that we get good results before the final and we give a very good performance on the day.”

Coach Mnqithi also reflected on Erwin Saavedra, the Bolivian attacker who succumbed to an injury early in his arrival at his new home in Tshwane. According to Coach Manqoba, the 26-year-old is making progress with his fitness.

“He’s definitely going to play many more matches for us, he was unfortunate with the injury that he got when we played Al Hilal. We all took it for granted, we thought he would recover really quickly but unfortunately it has taken a bit of time. He’s back in full training now but we are just worried because he has lost a lot of time in terms of training and we don’t want to have him going back.”

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“He’s okay now he’s started training with the team but we are just not too sure at this stage whether it’s going to be a good idea for us to try and rope him in and risk the potential of him going back when he’s got the chance to prepare him properly because he came to us without an injury. But we are optimistic he’s going to play a lot of matches.”