By Pule Jakkals
This coming weekend all eyes will be at Ethekwini’s Moses Mabhida Stadium for the MTN 8 Cup Final. It will be battle of the two major Cities in the country. Cape Town City representing the legislative city which house the country’s parliament and Mamelodi Sundowns representing Pretoria which is the country’s administrative capital. It will be the first time that both trans lock horns in an official PSL sanctioned cup final.
The other interesting point with this game is the 8. It’s an MTN 8 Cup. Sundowns last won it in 2008 when it was still known as the SAA Super 8. On the other City last won it in 2018.
It promises to be an exciting affair based on the number of factors. Both teams have coaches that has won the competition before as head coaches respectively. Coach Manqoba Mnqithi won it with Golden Arrows and Eric Tinkler with the same Cape Town City. Both teams play open attacking football and have players that can win you matches at any given day.
Both team’s technical teams are young and vibrant coaches that goes extra miles in preparing their respective teams. Both teams goes in to the final having won their respective games this past weekend with City overcoming a stubborn Golden Arrows team in the league and Sundowns overcoming their Congolese counter parts in the CAF Champions League encounter.
When it comes to a cup final factors like form doesn’t matter much as even an unfancied opponent can pull out a surprise and win.
Looking at both teams Sundowns goes in to this one as outright favorites purely on their current league and continental form. On top of that they have an array of galaxy of stars within their arsenal that are capable of inflicting pain to any opponent. For Sundowns in goals Dennis Onyango will be key to them keep City attackers at bay with his safe hands and have Musa Lebusa in defence to lead and direct his team mates. In midfield Rivaldo Coetzee, Adile Jali and Themba “Mshishi” Zwane are the engine of the Chloorkop based outfit. The danger posed by Peter Shalulile upfront and Lyle Lakay with his inch perfect crosses in to the box and lethal set pieces is likely to give the City team much to think about and to do.
City on the other side can’t be written off completely and they have on countless occasions proven that they can rise to the occasion when required to. They surely have the players to do so. Their weakness by far seems to be their inability to stand their own when under pressure as it was the case this past weekend in their game against Golden Arrows. Their weakness as well seems to be in their last line of defence where their new Angolan goalkeeper hasn’t struck much of a good understanding with his backfour. He has been having good games here and there but at times he seems a bit exposed. The captain Thamsanqa Mkhize will have to provide much needed leadership at the back and ably assisted by Felies and Terence Mashego. You can count on Surprise Ralani, Thabo Nodada and Mdantsane to pull the strings in midfield. City’s other weaknesses is upfront where they really don’t have a striker that can be depended on unlike their counter parts who have Shalulile, Kermit Erasmus and Thabiso Kutumela to do the damage. Fagray Lakay is a good striker but he doesn’t come near the Sundowns trio in terms of ability.
Sundowns will most likely stick to their traditional game of slow build ups and moving the ball with much ease and patience to open up City’s defence and Zwane will be key to this with deft touches. Tinkler will also want to have a go at Sundowns from the start but will be cautiously doing it because of danger posed by Sundowns midfield and front men. Sundowns will be much eager to get this one in the bag as it is the only competition that has been eluding them of late and they would want to get the monkey off their back and win it.
It is not going to be an easy game for either of the teams but based on the balance of scale, Sundowns has an edge and haven’t lost any cup final they have competed in recently. With all said and done all points to Mamelodi Sundowns to lift this one by 2-1 after extra time.
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