‘Football is personal for me,’ says Sundowns’ coach Mokwena

South African football clubs have only won two African Champions League titles. Ahead of Saturday’s semi-final, Mamelodi Sundowns’ coach Rulani Mokwena remembers both.

The Orlando Pirates won the trophy in 1995, a few years into the post-apartheid era, when exiled South African clubs were allowed into continental competitions.

Although Mokwena was eight years old, he vividly remembered the club’s trophy parade that passed through the historic township of Orlando West, stopping in front of his home to honor his late paternal grandfather, Eric Sono.

Sono was a token captain of the club who flouted laws forbidding people of different races from competing with each other. He was also the father of Jomo Sono, Mokwena’s uncle, and one of the most influential personalities in South African football.

The next time a South African club won the Champions League was in 2016, when Mamelodi Sundowns defeated Egyptian heavyweights Zamalek.

The then 29-year-old Mokwena stood on the sidelines as Pitso Mosimane’s assistant. At the full-time whistle, memories of his grandfather flooded him and he was overcome with emotion.

“Football is personal to me,” he told Al Jazeera. “My grandfather has achieved incredible things, my father played professionally and my uncle played with Pele and [Franz] Beckenbauer in America and then coached in a World Cup.

“The expectation and the pressure I live under every day is that I have to work twice as hard to make sure I carry on my family’s legacy.”

That kind of pressure can be a heavy burden to bear, but Mokwena is no ordinary man. At the age of 36, and in his first full year as a club head coach, he has already cemented his reputation as one of the best tacticians in African football.

Coach Milutin Sredojevic, who worked alongside him during his stint as assistant manager at Orlando Pirates, told Al Jazeera, “I’ve never seen anyone work on the little details of the game as much as Rulani.”

Mark Gleeson, one of Africa’s leading football analysts, told Al Jazeera: “I think he spends 25 hours out of 24 playing the game. He is a young coach who is completely obsessed with the game, does an incredible amount of homework and always has a plan.”

Mamelodi Sundowns enjoyed great success before his arrival and will likely continue to do so after his eventual departure.

The Pretoria club is funded by the Motsepe family, one of the wealthiest in South Africa, and the club is not short of resources. But the way the club has played this season is a testament to their coach’s brilliance.

Watching a Sundowns game is not much different from watching Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City in the Premier League.

Mokwena’s side plays with inverted full-backs to add additional passing lines, they overload different sides of the pitch based on their opponent’s weaknesses, and implement sophisticated pressure and counter pressure schemes to smother the opposition in their own territory.

Masandawana won the league with seven games to play this season. After 29 games, they managed 21 wins, six draws and only two defeats. If they win their last game of the year against last-placed Maritzburg United, they will set records for total wins, total points in a season and, depending on the score, total goals scored.

Still, Mokwena told Al Jazeera he is most proud of the collective effort his team has made to keep 19 clean sheets this year, conceding a further 12 goals.

“For me it goes against the football myth, that good defensive teams are teams that have low blocks, are around 16 and are very good on the counter-attack. My belief is that the more control you have from possession, the better you are defensively he explained.

Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta once famously called Pep Guardiola “The most defensive coach I’ve ever worked with in my life”, referring to Guardiola’s insistence on monopolizing possession and controlling every aspect of the match.

Mokwena smiled and acknowledged that he belongs to the same school of thought. However, he understood that in premier competitions such as the African Champions League, the outcome of a match does not always depend on predetermined game plans.

“That’s what makes football so interesting. It’s a game with so many variables or intangibles that aren’t just incidental – they’re central. Knowing I can’t control all those variables, I don’t get frustrated with them” , he said.

Perhaps the most illustrative example of intangibles affecting results looms on the horizon for Mokwena, when Sundowns play the first leg of their African Champions League semi-final against defending champions Wydad Athletic Club of Casablanca this weekend.

As well as having one of Africa’s most talented teams, Wydad supporters create arguably the continent’s most intimidating atmosphere, which can paralyze visitors, motivate hosts and impress umpires.

To prepare his players for what will happen at the Mohamed V stadium in Casablanca, Mokwena organized a series of psychologically oriented training sessions this week.

“I can’t exactly replicate the mood of the supporters,” he admitted. “But I can try to prepare the brain to deal with stress hormones emotionally and cognitively as best as possible.

“We have made the training as difficult as possible so that the game can become easier. In our exercises, I changed field sizes, game rules, and tried to create various obscure forms where cognitive stress and hormones would be released by the body.

It is such innovative training sessions combined with the close bond he shares with his players and his brand of tactical football that has made Mokwena a star.

“His future looks bright. He’s ahead of his time in South Africa and the rest of Africa as well. He’s smart, I don’t see much ego and I think he’ll break through some barriers,” said Gleeson.

No African international coach has coached in any of Europe’s top five leagues. Born in Johannesburg, Mokwena has set the bar high.

“It would be hard to break through,” he admitted. “It would take a lot of scars and bruises to go down the road less traveled, but I think I’d be preparing for something like that for the medium to long term, and I honestly believe it’s possible.”

That journey could begin with that elusive third Champions League title that the South African public has been clamoring for for the past seven years.