On Tuesday, Mamelodi Sundowns head coach Rulani Mokwena revealed the reason why left-back Sifiso Ngobeni is yet to settle in the team.
Ngobeni was signed by Sundowns from the now defunct Bloemfontein Celtic in July 2021, but he struggled to break into the team and was loaned out to SuperSport United in January 2022.
The 25-year old rejoined the Brazilians for pre-season and has been seeing some action, more so since Mokwena was elevated to a head coaching position.
However, Ngobeni was seemingly targeted at left-back in the Brazilians’ 2-1 win over Chippa United after replacing Aubrey Modiba for the last half-an-hour, where the Chilli Boys exploited the spaces he left behind on his overlaps.
Mokwena explained that the former Celtic wing-back is not yet used to a system of playing with a back-four, where full-backs have to “behave” differently, compared to playing with a line of five defenders, where there’s always an extra centre-back to cover the spaces.
“He (Ngobeni) will get better, we struggled with ‘Sailor’ (Khuliso Mudau) at the beginning when he came to Mamelodi Sundowns because there’s a certain way we want the full-back behave, in and out of possession,” Mokwena said in a press conference.
The tactician went on to say that they will have to reverse Ngobeni’s habits of playing as a wing-back, because in Sundowns’ system, there’s only two centre-backs and so he has to behave differently defensively.
“But when it’s two (centre-backs), it becomes very difficult, the behaviour has to be a little different for a full-back defensively and we’re trying to de-train (untrain) the automatization of a wing-back from Sifiso, while still keeping his wing-back offensive qualities,” he said.
Mokwena added that the process is similar to that of Thapelo Morena when he first joined the club. “It’s a very similar process to Thapelo Morena for example. So it will come with time because the first step is to de-train (untrain) and people don’t understand that. Once you’ve de-trained (untrained), then you have to retrain and that’s a new process on it’s own,” he said.
