Young Africans (Yanga SC) head coach Miguel Gamondi has discussed the team’s CAF Champions League fixture against South African giants Mamelodi Sundowns on Saturday.
East African nation, Tanzania is set to experience the biggest football week in history when two African football giants and Champions League gold medalists, Al Ahly and Mamelodi Sundowns descend to the nation for their respective Quarter-Finals fixtures against Simba and Yanga.
Wekundu wa Msimbazi will take on reigning champions Ahly on Friday while Tanzanian champions Yanga will welcome the high-flying Mamelodi Sundowns the following day.
“Sundowns is one of the biggest teams performing in the continent along with Al Ahly, no doubt they are the best on the continent. They are where they are today because of the consistency they have shown over the years,” said Gamondi as quoted by CAFOnline.
“I really like the style of play of Sundowns. They play their type of football that I like. I was coach at Sundowns, and I know what they like to do and what they are building now is not only important for South Africa, but for African continent because they it’s an advert for Africa.
“For us, it is probably going to be the toughest opponent we will get but at the same time it will be a great learning experience for Young Africans to play with a quality side and technical staff. I think this will be a great advert for African football.”
On Yanga’s target in the competition this campaign, Gamondi said: “The goal of the club was to reach the group stage and after reaching that, we said we want to compete and competed against big clubs like Ahly and came second.
“Now we want to do well in the knockout because it will be a good evaluation for where we are. It is a learning experience and for sure, we will play our best. We may not be in the best condition for this game as some players came back with injuries from the FIFA break but we will try our best and show that we deserve to be at this stage of the competition.
“In football you never know. Logic says Sundowns is the bigger team and they have played longer together and invested a lot of money, but football is 11v11 and we hope that we will get a result. We are a competitive team, and we will do our best.”