Tornado’s top central midfielder Thabiso “Forlan” Mikaele believes his teammates will come out victorious when they visit Sibanye in an ABC Motsepe League encounter at Adcock Stadium in Port Elizabeth on Friday.
Mikaele will not travel with the team to PE because he is still serving a suspension after getting a red card for a professional foul when the defending champions Tornado drew nil-all against Amavarara at North End Stadium last week.
After that one point the Mdantsane-based outfit collected, it put them on 16 points at third place on the log-standings, while Amavarara remained at the summit of the log with a one-point lead of 17 points. Sibanye on the other hand have remained at fourth position with 15 points.
“All we need now is to collect maximum [points] in each game we play, home and away, because the league is still open. Because [we] had a bit of a slow start when it comes to scoring goals, but we are getting there surely now and we can’t underestimate Sibanye especially since they have homeground advantage.
“And we are ahead of them [Sibanye] with one point, so we have to win this one in order to move up the standings,” said Mikaele.
He said the third-tier league newcomers, Amavarara, knew exactly how to tame the Mdantsane-based outfit, but he was relieved they at least defended their unbeaten run this season.
“We are still in the race for the title, because this league it’s still open. But we recently drew against Amavarara.
“That was a tough pill to swallow, they knew exactly how we’d come at them and they had a good plan of stopping us from getting inside their danger zone.
“And they were on to me, as a result I ended up getting a red card, but I believe that my teammates will pull an upset in PE come Saturday.
“Because I couldn’t do anything, that made me angry and started kicking my opponents,” said Mikaele with a chuckle.
He said the team they had last season was “epic and we were not playing around, all of us were scoring goals during each game – three to six goals in one game”.
“But the one we have this season – it’s a team that plays the ball tactically and we have not been worried too much about the goals.
“We have just been building our source of strength as a team and I think we are going back to that culture of scoring goals.
“Because if you check the last few games we’ve played, we’ve scored a couple of times, it’s just unfortunate we couldn’t close the game against Amavarara last weekend.”
Other fixtures:
Bush Bucks Academy v Butterworth (North End Stadium), Yakha United v The Guys (Mount Ayliff Stadium), Matta Milan v PE Stars (Msobomvu Sports Field, Dutywa), Highbury v Mthatha Bucks (NMU South Campus in Summerstrand), Amavarara v Peace Makers (Dumpy Adams Stadium, Queenstown), Birmingham City v Bizana Pondo Chiefs (North End Stadium, EL), Swartkops United Valley Brothers v Future Tigers (NU 2 Stadium, Motherwell)...