Mamelodi Sundowns head coach Miguel Cardoso says they only had 20 minutes on the training pitch in order to prepare for the Orlando Pirates showdown.
Sundowns thrashed their nearest title rivals 4-1 at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday afternoon to move nine points clear, albeit having played one game more than the Buccaneers.
It was a convincing display in front of their sold out arena which the stands were dominated by the Masandawana faithful in Tshwane.
But in a highly congested schedule since his arrival, in which Cardoso says he’s only had 30 training sessions, he admitted they didn’t do much in terms of physical training for the impressive performance.
“We try to be balanced always. The approach on the team development is always balanced, it means when we attack we should consider how the other team can harm us – and today it was clear, we had to be very clever in this moment, it’s a big must.
“The moment we lose the ball, we knew it would be critical moments, we had to cope with that and because we did it so well we could express oursveles by having the ball, committing spaces, managing width and depth.
“The way we see the team growing… as much as they understand the spaces, the best the team can express, that’s how individual quality should appear, they can play from spaces and we profit from that.
“We have been developing as a team on a daily basis with the hard work the players do. We don’t have a lot of time to train – we had 30 sessions [since my appointment] from those, many is recovery sessions for the regular players.
“After the game we work with the players who didn’t play, team building, that’s how we try to get all on the same level, but the investment of the players have made the development of this team, understanding the ideas, analysis, studying the tactics.
“This game with Pirates, was prepared in 20 minutes, we had 20 minutes on the pitch, no running just positioning the players, where the ball moves from there to here and when we win the ball, the different moments that we do.
“Video analysis, then team meetings, that’s how we prepared, there’s no time to train, if we do train, they will not arrive in the game with good condition, so we didn’t even exercise in terms of physical questions, just positional sessions 10v10, building up. How we should press when we are high on the pitch, how to press from a low block.
“Then when we have the ball, how do we start from the goalkeeper, what variations can we introduce to the game, when we’re building up with three, when we will be higher, when we lose the ball, what to do.
“From now on our worry is Tuesday, we have a big responsibility on Tuesday, as you can imahine, after we win Pirates, the responsibility to win increases, we made wonderful number of points after the first half of the league, but the end is far away.
“Each match we play, we close in on it more and more but there’s a long way to go, a lot to do, so we have a small advantage that we must respect – there’s no time for parties, they must go home and sleep, rest well coz there’s another match [in the Nedbank Cup] on Tuesday. – the past speaks for itself and we must be on the heights of this past.”
