Staff Reporter.
Mamelodi Sundowns have added new signings Teboho Mokoena, Surprise Ralani and Erwin Saavedra to their squad list for the African Champions League, meaning all the players are all available for Friday’s opening Champions League group clash.
Clubs are allowed to register 40 players per season for African club competition, 10 more since the onset of the COVDI-19 pandemic. It used to be 30 per campaign.
Clubs can register all 40 players at the start of the campaign if they want but then cannot use the 10 slots available in the second window. Usually clubs initially register 30 and ten once the knockout sages are over, add another 10.
Sundowns have, however, only three new signings: Mokoena was recently purchased from Sundowns, Ralani added from Cape Town City and Bolivia international Saavedra comes from South America.
The 25-year-old has yet to play for Sundowns since his move from champion club Bolivar, for whom he competed in both the Copa Libertadores and the Coppa Sudamericana, which are South American equivalents of the African Champions League and African Confederation Cup.
But both Mokoena and Ralani have featured and scored for Sundowns. Ralani netted on debut in the Nedbank Cup first round tie at Richards Bay last Friday while Mokoena has made two substitute appearances for Sundowns, and got a goal on Monday night in the DStv Premiership against Chippa United.
Meanwhile Sundowns co-coach Manqoba Mngqithi is not naïve though, thinking that they’ll just claim the continental since they’ve made these new acquisitions. Instead, he emphasised the importance of going pound-for-pound with their continental rivals.
“We are looking at our competitors in the Champions League and we are trying the best we can to get the team to that level. We want to make sure that we are at a state where we compete at almost the same level as them,” he said.
“We all have one mentality which is to win the Champions League. All these years, even when we didn’t win it, our plan was to win it. That’s why we are fighting to be in it every season. Signing is always influenced by trying to be better.
“We are hoping to get there. I would not regard not winning the Champions League as a failure (from us). But it’s something that I wouldn’t want to experience. We’d all love to see Sundowns winning the Champions League (once again).”
Sundowns have been forced to host Al Hilal at the Royal Bafokeng Sports Palace after their home grounds, Loftus Versfeld, Lucas Masterpieces and Tuks, were deemed ineligible to host matches by CAF during the evaluation process.