15th March 2024
The two sides clash in the Nedbank Cup round of 16 tie at the Lucas Moripe Stadium on Sunday evening in a David versus Goliath fixture since the Team of Choice got relegated to the second tier last season.
Mokwena explained why they were a lot easier to analyse.
"Fortunately, there's [footage] and you want to also give credit to the PSL really because we're getting a bit more coverage of the First Division and their latest game was on TV. In fact, I was just speaking to Teko [Modise] outside because he was actually doing the commentary of that game and he covered, I was listening to some of his comments and I asked him about one or two things because he saw the game live. So, as I was walking in, I asked about one or two things that he mentioned while he was doing the game so, fortunately, we do have access to that," Mokwena said.
It’s also a well-known fact that The Brazilians have an army of analysts and they are often spotted physically at the games.
The coach adds this gives the technical team a huge advantage.
"I've got to give a lot of credit to the technical team that we have, particularly our analysts' department headed by Goolam [Valodia] and we've got Dayle [Solomon] who's on the field, [our] on-sight opposition analyst and he does incredible work for us where he covers a lot of the opponents. So, he's done that and I said today they loaded quite a bit of information on my things. So, we'll spend a bit of time [analysing]," Mokwena added.
Mokwena does expect the side now coached by Simo Dladla to approach the cup match with a few more of their experienced players because the U23 rule imposed on Motsepe Foundation Championship clubs falls away in this competition.
"And the difficulty also is that sometimes you prepare for a certain way of playing and then they come in the cup games when they play a team like Sundowns and they change completely.
“The first thing is the rules in the NFD do not allow for all your senior players to play, you've got to have a certain number of youngsters in your team at a certain point but when you play the cup game you can play all your senior players and so already that is one of the biggest things that you've got to take into consideration."