‘AS FAR as we keep that mentality. AS FAR as we are capable to understand that together we become much stronger. AS FAR as no one becomes more important than the team itself. AS FAR as we understand that in the high level of competition, individually, as much as you give of yourself the best the team will become.’
Miguel Cardoso's inner John Dunne came out to play yesterday.
Ahead of Mamelodi Sundowns final group match of the CAF Champions League, their Portuguese coach went all poetic as he explained what it would take for the South African champions to succeed in their quest to avoid defeat against Morocco’s AS FAR Rabat.
It was as though Cardoso was inspired by the opposition’s name as he explained just what the Brazilians needed to get the desired one point that will be enough to see them make it to the quarter-finals.
Following their come-from-behind 2-1 victory at AS Maniema last weekend, Sundowns will no doubt go into the clash against the already qualified AS FAR confident they can avoid defeat in front of their partisan crowd at Loftus Versfeld.
A victory will see them topping the group and thus sending out a statement to the rest of the other contenders that the 2016 champions are serious players.
“The confidence of a team comes from the results,” Cardoso said before going all rhythmic.
“It sustains the work of the coach; it sustains the work of the players; it makes everybody believe more and more in what we do.”
Not that he struggled to get buy-in from the players upon taking over from Manqoba Mngqithi midway the campaign.
Far from it for as he says “from the first day that I arrived here I felt that energy, that we were speaking the same language, that what we proposed was something the players received the right way.
“Our communion of objectives became clear and easy. So, I think we are working with the right ambience so that we can continue to make good things.
“Obviously we have to fight, we have to go through the difficulties and we have to do more and more every day.”
Now at a club renowned for playing ‘beautiful football’ and having replaced a man who had apparently deviated from that, Cardoso says he ‘does not really understand’ what that is because ‘in the end beautiful is when you win’.
“Beautiful is how you adapt to the conditions and how you succeed under different conditions. When you play competitions in Africa, the continent is so huge, so big that the conditions you are going to face are so different from one place to the other.”
And then he went all John Dunne again: “That’s also what we are trying to get. That’s why I speak about mentality. That’s why I speak about focus.
“That's why I speak about the right emotions to face the different moments that we are going to go through.
“And if we do it in the right way, eventually we are closer to overcoming the difficulties.”
Cardoso stressed the fact that Champions League football is for the big teams and went on to explain what those are.
“Big teams are not the teams that are imbalanced. Big teams are the ones that grow from understanding the different moments that the game brings.
“Big teams are the ones that defend good to attack better and attack better to defend good.
“The big teams are balanced and know that in Champions League level, the opponent can also harm you any moment.
“If you want to go further into the last eight of the competition, that’s the mentality we want to create.”
And AS FAR as...