Following Cassius Mailula heroics in Mamelodi Sundowns’ 8-1 win over La Passe FC in the CAF Champions League second preliminary round over the weekend, co-Coach Manqoba Mngqithi stressed the importance of promoting young players to the first team.
“Our academy is our flagship, we want to always be able to produce every year players that can really come in and help the team in achieving it’s endeavors and more than anything else to make sure that our development and the money spent on our academy is not wasted but it’s always having very good returns on investment. When you see how [Sphelele] Mkhulise is coming up, I am very happy now in terms of his offensive play because we always had our fights with him but now we see that he has realized that this is a make or break in terms of making sure that he forces himself into the team, because it’s important when you’re always pitching with a goal or pitching with an assist. And to see a young boy that we’ve just promoted now [Mailula] playing the way that he’s playing now, it’s also encouraging,” says Mngqithi as quoted by the club’s website.
“Offensively [Mailula] probably achieved all our metrics, he was always in the right positions at the right time, scoring goals for a young boy like that in the Champions League. It’s something big, but I still have a lot of question marks with his behavior upon losing ball possession, I think that’s an area that he must improve on which is why I’m saying our high press was not very good and not only because of him, it’s a collective. But you would expect that your leading striker should spearhead your high press or counter pressing.”
“But these are areas that can easily improve because we know what he’s capable of, he’s one of the best finishers in the country. We’ve always known that, but he must improve the intensity of his performances more especially upon losing possession [and] not necessarily when he loses possession but when the team loses possession. In most cases against teams that sit back when you lose possession it’s actually the biggest moment for you to score a goal because if you can capitalize on those moments after losing possession, they are already thinking offensive, they are already thinking of going out of their defensive positions and if you cut and look for verticality and create moments. I think it’s an area of his game that must still improve but we are patient.”
“The training regime in the first team it’s not the same as the training regime in the junior team, naturally the intensity of a young boy can not be at our level but we are very impressed with what he is offering which is why he’s been a regular in the team, he’s doing well even at training and if there’s one boy that I know he’s got a goal in him it’s that boy.”
Mngqithi also praised Moroccan international Abdelmounaim Boutouil after he came off the bench for his competitive debut against the struggling Seychellois on Friday night.
“Technically he’s unbelievable, he makes less mistakes, he’s got a full range of passing, short, medium or long. [He makes] passes that break lines and passes that are targeting in the opposite 8, passes that are tagging the opposite wing back or full backs and he can find the striker very easily. Technically you can not falter anything from him and he’s also very good on set pieces.”
“Aerially he’s a very dominant figure in that space, but his physical condition is not at the right level to make a lot of judgment but we brought him because in almost all of the metrics he’s very close if not better than what you would get from a Ricardo Nascimento.”