Motsepe Foundation Championship Signings | 16 July 2026
University of Pretoria FC — AmaTuks — have confirmed the return of Sundowns loanees Jody Ah Shene and Aphelele Teto for the entire 2026/27 Motsepe Foundation Championship season. The double loan, reported by iDiski Times on 16 July 2026, extends a working relationship that saw both players spend the 2025/26 campaign at Hillcrest and now brings continuity to a technical project that formally reset under new head coach Michael Loftman only weeks earlier. It is the second Sundowns arrival into AmaTuks in eight days, following the 8 July loan of teenage academy graduate Siyabonga Mabena.
The two names
Striker Jody Ah Shene originally joined Sundowns from Cape Town City in January 2026 and was immediately loaned out to AmaTuks — a move that has now been converted into a full-season extension. Midfielder Aphelele Teto joined the club at the start of the 2025/26 campaign under the same arrangement and returns for a second consecutive year. Both players are known quantities at Hillcrest, which is precisely the value of the re-loan: continuity of profile in a season where the technical bench itself is new.
The Loftman project
Michael Loftman, appointed 22 June 2026 after a spell as Sundowns’ set-piece coach, began his AmaTuks pre-season training on 6 July. Sending two players he already knows from the Chloorkop system back into his group cuts weeks off the integration curve. Alongside 19-year-old Siyabonga Mabena — a Sundowns academy graduate with 25 senior appearances and two goals for the champions — Loftman now has three Sundowns-pipeline players in his squad, all of whom have played inside the same tactical vocabulary his coaching career was shaped in.
What the depth chart looks like now
AmaTuks finished 11th in the 2025/26 Motsepe Foundation Championship on 35 points from 30 games — the definition of a middle-of-the-table season. Loftman’s brief, on the evidence of the recruitment pattern, is to lift that ceiling without hollowing out the wage bill. Three loaned Sundowns players in a Championship squad is an unusual level of parent-club support for a club at this level and will meaningfully shift what AmaTuks can put on the pitch in wide areas and through the middle. It also comes with a specific downside — none of these players belong to AmaTuks, and the club will need a plan for what its own squad looks like when the loans expire.
