Milutin Sredojevic ignoring Pitso Mosimane’s ‘mind games’

by Graeme Jackson

Thursday Apr 12, 2018. 17:00

Orlando Pirates Milutin Sredojevic insists he is not getting involved in any ‘mind games’ with his Mamelodi Sundowns counterpart Pitso Mosimane.

‘Micho’ has consistently downplayed talk that Pirates could claim the league championship ahead of Sundowns, though their draw with SuperSport United on Wednesday leaves Mosimane’s side very much in charge of the title race.

The ‘Downs coach has publicly stated that the pressure is getting to the Buccaneers, but Sredojevic didn’t take the bait and insists he has nothing but respect for the former Bafana Bafana boss.

"I have been happy with my brother Pitso, we have watched the game the other day [together]," Sredojevic said after the goalless stalemate with United.

"First of all, I have the highest degree of respect to this country, culture, tradition, style of life, habit and everything.

"As a foreigner, I'm here technically to help together with our technical team to rebuild and bring the stability at Pirates and we are doing that.

"I don't have a right to think about other things. If I think about mind games and whatever we shall lose focus on this.

“Our focus is on our performance, in our build-ups, if we succeed in how we attack, if we fail in how we defend. And I have been satisfied except that football didn't pay us back what we did against SuperSport."

The Serbian added: "We are looking at ourselves, we are not thinking about anyone else except ourselves and we are focusing on Sunday's game now. We are only thinking about AmaZulu [Pirates’ next opponents].

"We are not thinking about anything else. We don't want to enter into exchanges through the media or whatever.

"We are in the process of returning the team where it is supposed to be all the time and to keep it there because we had an unfortunate period of a few seasons not in the top three, that we have not won trophies since 2014. So we are rebuilding that process and we have brought stability."