While some Mamelodi Sundowns supporters were still walking into the Loftus Versfeld Stadium, Marcelo Allende had already put Sundowns in the lead as early as the 4th minute to begin the slaughter of Al Ahly.
Sundowns beat The Red Devils 5-2 to book their place in their knockout stages with two games to spare as they played in front of a capacity stadium in Pretoria on Saturday afternoon. The Brazilians regained the lead of Group B as they now have 10 points ahead of Al-Hilal, who sit on nine points.
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The Egyptians’ goal came from a Sundowns error when Aubrey Modiba lost the ball in the sweet spot from after Percy Tau pressed him. Ahmed Kendouci stole the ball from Modiba and gave it to Mohamed Sherif, who had the easy task to fire past Ronwen Williams to get the equalizer for the visitors.
However, Sundowns roared back with first half goals from captain Themba Zwane and Teboho Mokoena. Zwane showed why he is the mainstay in Downs’ attack after he showed his class and experience in the 24th minute.
Allende took the corner kick and Al Ahly looked as though they had it under control as they extinguished the danger, but their clearance only fell outside the box and Neo Maema revived the attack, with a high ball into the box.
The ball found Mothobi Mvala who headed it into the path of Zwane, and the 33-year-old had the option to pass it on to Peter Shalulile, but with possibility of the Namibian being offside, Zwane went for glory and restored Sundowns’ lead.
About 16 minutes later, Mokoena scored a goal worthy of winning any match. There are very few superlatives to describe Mokwena’s thunderbolt, but one thing for sure is that Mokwena reminded the Masandawana faithful of former skipper Hlompho Kekana, who made it a habit of scoring long range crackers.
For Sundowns’ fourth goal, Maema was again at the architect as he led a counter attack and dazzled to lose his markers, before he threaded a ball to Shalulile. Nine out of 10 times, Shalulile does not miss from that kind of position and he banged in to take the steam out of Al Ahly before he completed his brace in the dying moments of the game to earn himself the Man-of-the-Match.
Percy Tau reception
Denis Onyango and Williams were the first to come out to warm-up and they were greeted by cheers from their supporters, only for those cheers to quickly change its tune to boo’s when Al Ahly came out to rev their engine.
However, as soon as Tau appeared, Sundowns fans chanted Tau’s name paired with resounding applause as he waved to greet and salute Sundowns fans, in a gesture that shows there is no love lost between Tau, who won this competition with Masandawana in 2016.
When he scored Al Ahly’s second goal, he did well to turn Modiba inside out before navigating past him and went on to beat Williams, he observed the unwritten rule of not celebrating when you score against your former team. Tau quickly retrieved the ball from the back of the net and placed it on the kick-off spot.
