Another shot at continental glory for Downs
It may be second prize on the continent, but it's highly unlikely that Sundowns coach Pitso Mosimane will be taking the Confederation Cup lightly.
|||Johannesburg - It may be second prize on the continent, but it's highly unlikely that Sundowns coach Pitso Mosimane will be taking the Confederation Cup lightly.
The Pretoria-based outfit have been drawn to play Ghanaian team SC Medeama in the 2016 Confederation Cup second round after crashing out of the Champions League to AS Vita last week.
It hasn't been a good week for the club: two matches played, and both the 2016 Nedbank Cup and the 2016 Champions League are now forgettable memories as far as the Tshwane club is concerned.
But with a six-point cushion in the domestic league over second placed Bidvest Wits (with five games to play), and with a second bite in Africa, there is a still a whole lot on the line. It's now the challenge of coach Pitso Mosimane to lift his players' heads and renew their focus, and it will be interesting to see how Downs will fare away to Ajax Cape Town on Wednesday in a league encounter.
In terms of the Confederations Cup, Masandawana fans can rest assured that Mosimane will not take the competition lightly; the former Bafana Bafana coach is a man driven by ambition and he no doubt wants to leave an impressive legacy at the club.
“We have to concentrate on the league; we have to concentrate on CAF. It's not a funeral,” he said after the defeat to Pirates in the Nedbank Cup.
“It's not easy but it's normal in football that these things happen. You see Barca lose three games in a row, it happens to us, it's normal.”
And it's not that the Confederation Cup is without prestige - the last three competitions were won by Etoile du Sahel, Al Ahly and CS Sfaxien - some of Africa's giants. Standing in the way of Sundowns making the group phase are SC Medeama, not known as one of Ghana's bigger clubs; their home ground in Tarkwa has a capacity of only 5000.
The home leg for Sundowns takes place on between 6 - 8 May, the away match set to take place on the 17th or 18th of May. Medeama's history only stretches back 14 years.
The club have never won the league, their only success coming in the 2013 and 2015 Ghana FA Cup, which was their ticket to the Confederation Cup this year.
Compared to Sundowns' rich history, Medeama can be seen as relative minnows, and it would come as a big shock if the South Africans fail to advance to the next round.
Then again, recent years on the continent have provided plenty of upsets, the smaller clubs and nations seemingly closing the gap on the big boys - African News Agency (ANA).