Lucas Ribeiro devastated Orlando Pirates with a brace during their Betway Premiership encounter. Photo: BackpagePix
Swashbuckling Mamelodi Sundowns are well on their way to a record-extending eight league titles in a row.
Led by the irrepressible Lucas Ribeiro, Sundowns swatted aside Orlando Pirates with an emphatic 4-1 win at the Loftus Versfeld Stadium on Saturday afternoon. The outcome allows Sundowns a nine-point lead (albeit having played a game more) over Pirates, who must be resigned to their fate of finishing distant runners-up again, as was the case in the previous two seasons.
Last season, Sundowns' winning margin was a whopping 23 points (Sundowns 73, Pirates 50). The previous season, another one-horse race, finished with Sundowns winning by 16 points (Sundowns 70, Pirates 54).
Sundowns, while coping with a hectic playing schedule this season, have not been entirely convincing.
Who will ever forget their loss to newly-promoted Magesi in the Carling Knockout Cup in late November?
In late October, Polokwane, out of the blue, defeated Sundowns, who enjoyed a massive 72% possession advantage in the match. A shocking statistic from this match showed Sundowns did not produce a single shot at goal that was on target.
After these setbacks, Sundowns replaced Manqoba Mngqithi with Portuguese coach Miguel Cardoso. His initial challenge was to deal with the burden of playing CAF Champions League, Betway Premiership, and Nedbank Cup matches in a short space of time.
What Cardoso has discovered is that the huge Sundowns player squad is well nigh impossible to manage because many players were not enjoying game time. The experienced Cardoso, who previously worked in Tunisia, Spain, Portugal, France, Ukraine, and Greece, decided three weeks ago to drastically trim the squad. Through substitutions, he can give peripheral players game time.
Cardoso has already enjoyed the benefits of that cull, and players in his smaller squad are all match-fit despite the team's demanding schedule. He has managed the situation brilliantly, and at a time when the club was preparing to face its toughest league competition, he spent only 20 minutes on the training pitch ahead of Saturday's crunch fixture against Pirates.
In the PSL, Sundowns' squad is incomparable, and on Saturday, they served notice that they are well on their way to another league title. At the heart of this statement was Brazilian Lucas Ribeiro, who single-handedly produced the shutdown effect on Loftus on Saturday.
He scored goals on either side of half-time and then laid on the assist for Teboho Mokoena's coup de grâce at the end to close out the 4-1 hiding. At this stage of the season, he leads the race for the 'Player of the Season' award by a country mile.
Despite his scintillating form in the league, which has produced four goals and four assists in his last five league games, Cardoso says Ribeiro is yet to reach his peak. As Cardoso's stamp on a team brings out a unique style and approach to the game, Ribeiro's game is thriving, and on Saturday, we saw him leaving many of Pirates' star players faltering in his slipstream.
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