The Brazilians did eventually break the deadlock with a penalty from striker Lucas Ribeiro and winger Neo Maema adding a second goal to join Magesi FC in the cup final on 23 November in Bloemfontein.

Mngqithi said Malesela was a worthy opponent.

"Like I anticipated from the beginning, I've always thought this is going to be a very difficult match because we are playing against a very good team. You know in South Africa sometimes we look at the status of the team and we don't really look at the details in terms of performance and I honestly don't think they were in the semi-final by mistake,” Mngqithi said.

“Technically very good team with good spells of possession they can always hurt you."

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The Sundowns mentor admitted it was tricky trying to outsmart the Gallants team in certain moments of the game until they also altered their tactics.

"They have players for the type of game that they are playing. I think Shai [Siyabulela] is very instrumental in overloading the midfield when he comes short from that half-striker role that he plays,” Mngqithi added.

“Then we've got Mphambaniso [Monde] next to him and Manaka [Edgar] was very strong, he was following Lucas [Ribeiro] everywhere and we did anticipate that because we saw Nange [Phathutshedzo] was also following de Jong [Andre] in the previous match that's why we wanted to have a double 10.

“But second half we did not get enough because Marcelo [Allende] was always drifting to the outside and we wanted him to get into the second line so that it could complement Lucas.

“But I think second half we came in stronger with a little bit more rotated centre backs to make Shai work a little bit harder from one centre back to the other which got him tired very quickly in the second half."

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