Mamelodi Sundowns coach Miguel Cardoso has revealed how he has been touched by the great welcome he has received from the technical team that remained at the club.
Steve Komphela and Kennedy Mweene are among members of the coaching team who remained at the club when Manqoba Mngqithi was sacked and Cardoso handed the job last week and while it has just been over a week, the new team is enjoying the welcome.
“In terms of working with ourselves, with the group of people that we joined, it was very easy,” said Cardoso.
“Coach Steve, amazing person, so easy to relate with, a mindset that very easily touched ours, from Coach Kennedy, the same from Mathias Zangenberg also.
Warm welcome delights Cardoso
“So, the fitness department, the analysts, I think we indeed felt inside a family. And when you are coming from another country, we brought our excitement obviously, our energy, but we are so well received, the things flow easier. And I feel that they flowed from the very first day.”
Cardoso has had a great start to his reign with back-to-back 1-0 wins against Raja Casablanca and Stellenbosch FC.
The Brazilians beat Stellies on Wednesday to open a three-point lead at the top of the table and they will now have a rare week to prepare before their next match against AmaZulu on Christmas eve.
It is a time that Cardoso cherishes as he feels it will give him an opportunity to further know his players while also implementing his philosophy.
Sundowns coach relishing rare free week
“Obviously, regarding your first point on the week, obvious, naturally, but we need this week, mostly to give some rest to some players. We have a lot of players that are injured, some of them in the long term, but some others that have small issues that we can recover them, probably in one two, weeks,” he added.
“And we need this air, let’s say, to breathe. For example, I can tell you there’s one player that stayed, and we gave him two days without training so that he can breathe a little bit and feel himself more comfortable too then proceed the preparation.
“But also at the same time, obviously, we need to gain time on the preparation. So we need the practices, but we also cannot push them too much. We must be clever on you, on managing the effort, and we must be clever also managing the training sessions so that we don’t take them too much on one side, but also we don’t stop progressing in the work.”
