Mailula was the hero of the day in the Sundowns’ most recent fixture when they trashed La Passe 8-1 last Friday.
The 22-year-old made a senior club debut when they played Chippa United earlier this season and looks promising as he has been included in Downs’ matchday squads for a couple of times this season.
While showering praise on the Limpopo-born attacking midfielder, the club’s co-head coach Mngqithi also had some “question marks”,
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MNGQITHI ON MAILULA
“To see a young boy that we’ve just promoted now [Mailula] playing the way that he’s playing now, it’s also encouraging,” Mngqithi told Sundowns.co.za.
“Offensively [Mailula] probably achieved all our metrics, he was always in the right positions at the right time, scoring goals for a young boy like that in the Champions League.
“It’s something big, but I still have a lot of question marks with his behavior upon losing ball possession, I think that’s an area that he must improve on which is why I’m saying our high press was not very good and not only because of him, it’s a collective. But you would expect that your leading striker should spearhead your high press or counter pressing.”
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But these are areas that can easily improve because we know what he’s capable of, he’s one of the best finishers in the country. We’ve always known that, but he must improve the intensity of his performances more especially upon losing possession [and] not necessarily when he loses possession but when the team loses possession.
In most cases against teams that sit back when you lose possession it’s actually the biggest moment for you to score a goal because if you can capitalize on those moments after losing possession, they are already thinking offensive, they are already thinking of going out of their defensive positions and if you cut and look for verticality and create moments. I think it’s an area of his game that must still improve but we are patient.”