Cape Town City assistant coach Diogo Peral believes the experience of playing in four cup finals and winning two since their formation in 2016 will serve them well when they face Mamelodi Sundowns in their third MTN8 final at the Moses Mabhida Stadium on Saturday.
John Comitis’s team won the Telkom Knockout six months into their debut season in the top-flight in 2016-2017 and were the winners of the MTN8 in 2018, beating SuperSport United, the team which had denied them in the same competition the previous year.
Peral, who assists coach Eric Tinkler at City, said their cup experience and the fact that Tinkler was the Citizens’ coach when they won the TKO by beating SuperSport 2-1 at Peter Mokaba Stadium in 2016, will serve them well against a Sundowns side who are huge favourites despite their struggles in this competition in recent years.
“It’s our fourth final and the players are excited. We’re here on the back of good results, there’s positivity in the camp and we’re ready,” Peral said in Durban on Thursday.
“We just need to be on top of our game when we come up against a team like Sundowns. They’re a team that has few weak points, offensively they’re good and defensively they don’t concede goals. They’ve got individuals who can do the damage and we know we have to be on top of our game.
“If you take our 20-man squad for the final, we’ve got individuals who can compete. We’ll go toe-to-toe with them.”
City started their top eight campaign by beating AmaZulu at the venue that will host the final and it is also the same ground where they defeated SuperSport in the 2018 final. Peral said all that should inspire his team to do well on Saturday.
“We came here to play AmaZulu and we started probably the toughest game. We got through that one at this venue and so hopefully that will help us.”
Despite City conceding three goals against Lamontville Golden Arrows in their 4-3 home win in the league at the weekend, Peral credited Tinkler for the way he’s managed to organise the team’s defence, which he insisted will serve them well against an offensive team like Sundowns.
“I think we’ve been better [in defence]. Coach Tinkler came in and he realised that when you look at the table, you don’t have to guess what you need to work at. You need to concede less goals if you want to go further up the log than we did last season.
“So we’ve worked hard on that and we’ve had four clean sheets. It was difficult for us to get clean sheets last season and so we’ve improved there.
“I think in that Arrows game [City's 4-3 league win on Saturday] we panicked and maybe it’s a blessing in disguise that it happened to us in that game. If we can play the way we did in the first 60 minutes then we’ll have a big chance against Sundowns.
“In the last 30 minutes we panicked, I don’t know ... We played like we did in the game against Stellenbosch [a 3-0 defeat].
“But otherwise, we’ve been more solid in defence and we’ve become better and we hope that follows into Saturday’s game.”
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