Mpumalanga Black Aces’ coach Lombi Mabusela says he is pleased with the way preparations have been going for their MultiChoice Diski Challenge quarterfinal clash.
Aces will meet Bloemfontein Celtic next week at the King Zwelithini Stadium in Umlazi, Durban on February 1. They finished fourth in Group B to set up a clash with Celtic, who took the top spot in Group A.
“We’ve started with the preparations and everything is going well so far, we began on the 5th of this month. At this point we’ve played two friendlies, the third one had to be postponed because of bad weather.
“The way the boys have been playing, it looks like we are ready,” Lombi said.
AmaZayoni, as Aces are affectionately known, face a Celtic side that enjoyed a good run in the group stage. They won four of their seven matches and achieved the second highest scoring record with 15 goals. Their biggest win was a 8-0 thrashing they handed to Moroka Swallows.
Coach Lombi agrees that they will be playing against a very good team, although he wasn’t able to watch as many of their opponents’ games as he could have liked.
“I don’t want to lie, as much as some of the matches were shown on TV, the schedule was too tight to follow all of them. What we know is that they are going to bring their regular players, because they are available, both the development and first team players.
“Their team won’t change that much, we’ll count on that. They looked strong with the team they played with. We expect them to be even stronger,” the former Aces' defender and captain commented.
Aces unleashed a number of promising youngsters in the group stage and also fielded first team players like Dennis Masina, Doctor Mapuru, Vincent Kobola and Tshidiso Tukane. Their coach is happy with his squad going into the quarterfinals.
“We still have the same squad. We’ll only be welcoming back Judas, who is returning from injury, he didn’t play all the matches. He’s now fully fit,” he explained.
The Mpumalanga side is planning to go for broke in the knockout round and double their efforts, especially when taking into account the difficult run they had in their group matches. Aces went three matches without a win going into the final clash, which they won 3-1 against AmaZulu.
“What we also advised the players about is that after this match there will be no second chance. It’s not as if we will play and then hope to get elsewhere if we don’t win, like in the group stage. We just have to do it on the day,” concluded Lombi.
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