Mamelodi Sundowns goalkeeper Ronwen Williams says their mini-break before the FIFA Club World Cup has brought the energy back after a devastating CAF Champions League final defeat.
Sundowns suffered a heartbreaking defeat in the Champions League to Pyramids ahead of their trip to the United States of America, where the desire to arrive at the global event as African champions remained unfullfilled.
He revealed the squad was given a week off prior to returning to training over the weekend, a day before departing to Florida, USA, where they are based at the IMG Academy.
“It’s an amazing feeling to be at the Club World Cup, history for the club, for the country, so it’s been a long time coming, you know how hard we fought to be here, sacrificed so much,” Williams said.
“There was a lot of competitions this season that we had to focus on, and we only really started focusing on the Club World Cup this week, and it’s been a difficult time, having lost the Champions League final.
“But the good thing is that the coach gave us a few days off, five or six days and you could see once we got back at training, you could see the energy was back.”
Williams says it would have been ideal to arrive in the USA as African champions but they need to now ‘dig deep’ after what was the ‘hardest defeat of his career’ because of all the sacrifice to get there and hard work, but now it’s a new challenge the lay ahead.
“The most important thing was to reflect. Immediately after the game we had our chats but after that it was important to stay away from each other, we have played so many games, we travelled so much as well,” he explained.
“So this five days away from each other, it also… it re-energised us again, to get that spark back. Obviously it was devastating, it was hard to accept that defeat but we have to go again, at Mamelodi Sundowns there’s always another opportunity…
“And this… there’s no bigger than this and we can’t be mourning for too long, this is massive, probably the biggest club competition, so we’re excited and looking forward to it, when I saw the training you can see the energy and spark is back, the five days done us well.
“While others are going on vacation, we’re on another flight, that is the amazing thing about Sundowns, we’re always looking to the next tournament, the next competition, and as tough as it is, we enjoy it, we love it.”
Sundowns open their tournament on 17 June against South Korean champions ULSAN HD at the Inter & Co Stadium in Orlando.
