John Maduka relishes Mamelodi Sundowns challenge
IN SOUTH AFRICA—
Maduka
Malawian coach John Maduka continues to make headlines in South Africa after his South Africa DStv Premiership team Royal AM cruised to the Nedbank Cup semifinals through a 3-2 victory over University of Pretoria on Sunday.
Royal came from behind to beat AmaTuks 3-2 in treacherous conditions after heavy rain left water on the pitch.
Their reward for the win is a showdown against giants Mamelodi Sundowns, who thumped Summerfield Dynamos 5-0 to book a ticket to the last four.
Maduka told supersport.com that he always believed they would stage a comeback after trailing 2-0 at halftime.
“We knew we would come back. We started the game very slowly and it was expected because we were coming from back-to-back games. We knew we would start picking ourselves up,” he said.
Maduka hoped for better weather conditions and a better pitch for the Sundowns match.
“We’re looking forward to it. It’s a good one. We know it’s not going to be easy. I think it doesn’t matter who we play against in the semifinals, anything can happen. And it’s our home game. We will prepare well.
“We are going to compete and try to take us into the final. I am sure it is going to be a very interesting match, we just hope on that particular day the [weather] conditions and the condition of the field is good,” supersport.com quotes him as saying.
The encounter between the two teams will be much-anticipated as they occupy the top two slots in the DStv Premiership.
Sundowns top the log table with 54 points after playing 24 matches while Royal are second with 43 points from the same number of games.
Maduka would also be hoping for revenge as he was in charge of Bloemfontein Celtic when Sundowns beat them 1-0 in the 2020 Nedbank Cup final.
