Mamelodi Sundowns head coach Miguel Cardoso has shared more insight of the issues around Monnapule Saleng, insisting the matter is now with the club and not a coach’s problem anymore.
Earlier in the month, Cardoso confirmed that Saleng was no longer training with the senior side after multiple disciplinary issues, among them not pitching up for the CAF Champions League final second leg as well as the club’s pre-season tour in Austria.
When asked whether there would be a way back for Saleng into the first-team fold ahead of their MTN8 semi-final against Lamontville Golden Arrows, Cardoso shared more insights of Saleng’s misconduct and how they tried to integrate him in the team again and again, but also revealed that the matter is now with the club’s management and not his focus anymore.
“I don’t want to speak too much about that because at the moment Saleng is a club-issue, not a coach’s issue,” he stated on Thursday when asked whether the player had a chance to work his way back into the team.
“It was never a coach issue. He was always a player we gave a lot, a lot, a lot of effort. We tried to push him so much toward the group, toward the dynamic of the group, towards the behaviours that a professional player has to have, the mental stability that a professional player has to have.
“But inside the group we have no issues, we have a lot of understanding about what are the rules and our locker room has rules, the players establish those, and relate, and when a player systematically breaks these kind of things towards the teammates, towards the coaches, towards the club, we don’t know what we can count on.
“So there is a moment where we say how can we count on something, what is he gonna do?
“Imagine you train all of the week normal and then you put his name on a list, and the day we are waiting for him in the bus he just doesn’t appear.
“So these things did not happen once, did not happen twice, three, four times… being the last to arrive, the first to go away. It’s difficult to have a process of a development of a player, and I think you highlighted everything in the media that we tried in the beginning of the season to give him a lot of love, a lot of…
“So our idea with him after he failed us, let’s not put him apart, let’s embrace him, let’s try to give him stability, let’s give him stability, let’s make him feel important – I don’t know if you remember, but my assistant showed me there was a moment that I was dancing with him in the middle of the circle myself – trying to make him exactly understand how we wanted to integrate him in the family.
“But to be part of the family, you also need to want to be in the dynamic of the family. And it’s now the club’s time to speak about because it’s a club-issue and no more a coach’s questions.”