In the South African League on Saturday, Sundowns secured a dominant 4-1 victory over Orlando Pirates, putting them 9 points ahead of their rivals despite having a game in hand.
Football fans were confident that this victory would allow Sundowns to confidently march toward the championship. However, an interesting turn of events occurred in the match played yesterday, as Sundowns lost 1-0 to TS Galaxy. Coach Cardoso attributed the defeat to fatigue:
“We must understand that it’s impossible to have a schedule like this and play a fourth match in 72 hours [it was their fourth game in nine days with their previous game],” he said.
“I tried to change the team in the second half to give energy, but I felt the team was completely off in terms of proper energy in the second half. Neurologically, fatigue was on the limit.”
“A lot of their players defended aggressively and strongly… we couldn’t overcome that defensive system and due to them, we ended with this negative result. That’s why Galaxy draws many games [seven, more than any other team in the league], it’s not easy to win against them because of the way they organize themselves defensively.”
Sundowns’ next match is on Sunday against Mpheni Home Defenders. Cardoso emphasized the importance of rest and forgetting about the defeat during this time:
“There’s only one thing to do… is to get up, look forward, rest, and recover. We were not the best in the world in our last match [against Pirates], and we’re of course not the opposite of that now,” the Sundowns mentor said.
“Now it’s really important to recover the players both physically and emotionally after this setback… we will come back even stronger, that’s for sure.”