Neeskens not inspired by Chiefs win

While the 4-1 victory over Chiefs was hailed as the best performance by Sundowns and celebrated, Neeskens never saw anything to derive any inspiration from and reckons the first-half display by his team on Wednesday in the 2-1 loss against the same Chiefs was far much better than everything they did at Loftus.

"In our first game against Chiefs (4-1) when everybody wrote that it was magic…only the result was magic. Playing wise it was not that good. The first half that we played against Chiefs in League game (2-1 defeat on Wednesday) plus most of the second half that we played against Swallows was much better than the entire game against Chiefs (4-1 win).

"We were lucky in that game that within 23 minutes we had scored three goals. We came three times into the box in that game and we scored.

"However, if you see or had seen how many mistakes we made in that game with wrong passes that we gave away behind our own defence they could have scored two or three goals but they didn’t. But nobody writes about it because everybody just saw 4-1.

"I saw the game again twice and it was actually one of the worst defensively and especially in the build-ups. At least five times we passed the ball to our opponents and gave them initiative to attack but we were lucky that they didn’t score. Sometimes you give chances away and the opponent doesn’t take it," says Neeskens whose team travels to Dobsonville aware that they will need to win or play a high scoring draw to progress.

The Dutchman adds that Siyanda Xulu’s proposed moved to Rostov is off after the Russians failed to increase on their offer.

"We have given the Russian team the opportunity to make a bigger offer to the team because what they offered initially was not enough. I think there it is normal that when you are buying good players it will cost money.

"We gave them a week to come back to us with a bigger offer but they didn’t offer anything so that was final," says Neeskens.