The Sundowns is owned by South African business magnate Patrice Motsepe and is one of the most valuable clubs in Africa, by market value.
The Mamelodi Sundowns
Football Club (known simply as Sundowns) is a South African professional football club based in Mamelodi, Pretoria, in the province of Gauteng, that plays in the Premier Soccer League, the first division of the South African football league system. The Sundowns qualified for the continental title for the first time in the 1994 African Cup of Champions Clubs, but lost to AS Vita Club in the second round. However, the club was unable to defend the Ohlsson challenge and the title of the eight best in BP and the Tuane era came to an end, with Angelo Tsichlas leading the team as provisional coach until the club named Trott Moloto and, shortly after, Stan Lapot.By the end of 1986, the club had won the Mainstay Cup in a 1-0 fight against Jomo Cosmos at Ellis Park and goalkeeper Mark Anderson was chosen Footballer of the Year due to the arrival of new players. Under the tutelage of Screamer Tshabalala, the Sundowns played an entertaining and effective style of soccer that became known as The Shoe Shine and Piano. In 1969, Ingle Jinx Sigh, one of the founding players of the Sundowns and later owner of Marabastad Sundowns and Pretoria City (which later became Supersport United), decided to sell the club to Dr. Sundowns Football Club, which originated in Marabastad, a cosmopolitan area in the northwest of the financial district of Pretoria in the early sixties, where it was formed by a group of young residents in the area.
The club was liquidated and the soccer family Angelo and Natasha Tsichlas spoke to the bank and saved the club. The club has 1 appearance in the 1994 African Cup of Champions Clubs and 14 games in the CAF Champions League from 1999 until now. The club played in the final of the 2001 CAF Champions League, where it was defeated 4-1 on aggregate by the Egyptian club Al Ahly. That same year, ownership of the club passed into the hands of Standard Bank, which regained the club from Zola Mahobe.
That same year, 1985, South African football was the first sport in the country to stop being racial and the National Football League was formed, which incorporated the best clubs in the country, including the Sundowns. The Sundowns coach, who was spending a lot of money, recruited the services of elite South African players in search of supremacy, and changed his equipment to look like that of the Brazilian national team, which earned them their nickname, the Brazilians. In 2004, mining magnate Patrice Motsepe bought a 51% stake in the club and subsequently took full control of the club by buying the remaining shares, thus becoming the sole owner and shareholder of the club.
