Mamelodi Sundowns head coach Miguel Cardoso has opened up about his decision to make wholesale changes for the win over Magesi FC on Wednesday night.
Goalkeeper Ronwen Williams was the only player to retain his spot from Saturday's 1-1 draw with Orlando Pirate in the MTN8 semi-final first leg.
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Cardoso feels Sundowns' involvement in the FIFA Club World Cup has altered their preparations for the new campaign.
“Look we have 21 training sessions this season, 21. For us, it’s absolutely pre-season we are in a schedule with matches one after the other. So, the team is being resilient but the aggression of every match is taking much more impact on us," Cardoso told SuperSport TV.
“And we had to bring the youngsters because the squad is much more smaller, for sure it will be stronger in the future and then we’ll grow. For sure, others will join the group so that we can have more power because we need, we need more for the objective ahead of us, we need more.
“We managed contacts as groups as coaches, as a club and we represented ourselves and South Africa in a wonderful way in the Club World Cup. Everybody knew that because of that we would have two weeks of vacation and three weeks of preparation. So, our preparation have been going since this first three weeks of competition,” stated the coach.
Ahead of the weekend clash, Cardoso calls on their supporters to come out in numbers and believes it will be a beautiful encounter.
“We knew that we need to be resilient, we need to be mentally strong, we need to fight for every match with the most energy we can so that we can put the results that can take us in the front and next match will not be different.
“We hope we have the Masandawana family filling our stadiums that we get energy from them like today we felt them here. It will be a beautiful match for sure,” Cardoso noted.
Photo by Philip Maeta/Gallo Images
