Mamelodi Sundowns head coach Miguel Cardoso has addressed Thembinkosi Lorch’s situation, saying the club will make an announcement on his future when the time is right.
Lorch, 32, was on loan at Wydad Athletic Club where he had linked up with Rulani Mokwena last season.
The winger was arguably Wydad’s best player at the recent FIFA Club World Cup, and reports in North Africa suggested the Moroccan giants were keen on retaining him. However, this publication learnt that Wydad didn’t want to pay a fee, which Sundowns rejected and Lorch has been ordered to return to training.
Cardoso first clarified that he is not the one who makes the decisions on transfers at Chloorkop, before giving a brief comment on Lorch, which sounds like he is on his way out.
“I hear sometimes people saying, I don’t listen, I don’t really read the blogs or the fans, but sometimes my assistants bring me some things, and it’s important we clarify that in Sundowns it’s not the coach that chooses the players,” he said after his side’s MTN8 quarter-final win over Richards Bay.
“I don’t choose the players that enter the team. The players in Mamelodi Sundowns are chosen by the coach, the sports director and the board – and the President and the Chairman, for sure. So that’s how players come in the club.
“It’s not up to me to say ‘I want that one, and if you don’t bring him, I’m not happy. I will cry here’. I don’t make this kind of thing. So, it’s not the way we work.
“We look [at] profiles, we try to select the best profiles. Then there’s a business, of course, that I have an opinion that technically I should give and it’s in accordance that we bring players in.
“If it would not be like that probably it will be more quicker but we should not waste resources by bringing players we really don’t want to bring in. So that’s in the process that we are working hard to reinforce the team.
“Regarding Lorch, like Lucas [Ribeiro], like Peter [Shalulile], like [Khuliso] Mudau, I’m not going to discuss it here. But Lorch is a situation that comes from the past and also will be addressed and solved by the club.
“And in proper time, you’ll have information that it will be public, considering he is not here for sure.”
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