This is according to Maritzburg coach Fadlu Davids, who is preparing his side for Sunday's Nedbank Cup semi-final with the rampant Brazilians at Harry Gwala Stadium (15h00).
Davids was in attendance when Sundowns extended their unbeaten run to 15 matches - and lead at the Absa Premiership summit to six points - with a 1-0 win over relegation-threatened Golden Arrows at Loftus Versfeld on Tuesday.
“They’re not only a quality attacking side, their defensive structure is also very good. They’re such a well-oiled machine like I said in the beginning,” Davids said.
“In all departments; in the midfield and with double six and yes [Hlompho] Kekana will be out [due to suspension] but there’s still Oupa Manyisa. They still have quality, not only in the depth, but also in the stands as well.
“It’s a completely different team we are facing. You want to call it David versus Goliath, probably not. We are probably David's four-year-old son facing this Goliath and that is the difference between the two squads.
“But, at the end of the day, it’s eleven vs eleven out there and we’ll do our best to progress.”
The Team of Choice knocked Downs out of the MTN8 at the beginning of the season, but Davids points out that much has changed since then.
“They trained for three weeks before that and we were training for six weeks. They were busy with CAF [Champions League] preparations, MTN8 was like their first friendly match that they took as the build up for their fitness.
“We shouldn’t read too much into that result. We were flying, you saw the intensity we were playing with and they were in their third week of preparation time in pre-season. So that result, everything went for us on that day.
“We had good structure at that time, we had Evans Rusike who scored the goal,” he added of the Zimbabwean striker, who now plies his trade for SuperSport United.