Mamelodi Sundowns head coach Rulani Mokwena is hopeful they won’t need to split their squad and technical team for continental and domestic competitions.
Sundowns are competing in the CAF Champions League and African Football League (AFL) which all Premier Soccer League (PSL) clubs have voted against extending the domestic league by three weeks to accommodate the league champions.
It would see either Sundowns pull out of the competition, or field two completely different squads, should no agreement be reached between the rest of the league.
And with the Carling Knockout tournament now launched, their game against TS Galaxy will overlap with their AFL fixture against Petro de Luanda.
“I hope it doesn’t come to that, I hope it doesn’t and my hope is that we will always be able to put out the best team on the pitch and then of course to make sure all of us are available to assist and support the players over the 90 minutes,” he said when asked by iDiski Times if they will split their team.
“That’s what we did last season [gave everyone a chance to play], we had a squad of 36 I think and we played 35 players without any splits, that’s the group and the work we have to make sure each and every player is prepared.
“We don’t train one team but the entire group to make sure that they understand the demands, style of play and schemes. We have to make sure we are ready for each and every game this season.”
Mokwena admitted it will be a massive psychological challenge to overcome the fixture congestion but the old cliche of one game at a time couldn’t be more relevant to the task at hand as he detailed what goes into preparing for each team.
“The first is to make sure the recovery is good between games, that’s the most important, so we’ve set up a task team within our technical team to make sure we work on that, but also we have to go game by game, cliche but reality is to focus on one at a time and try and win every single game you’re about to play and make sure players are ready for it.
“I can’t get too far ahead of myself [in terms of navigating the schedule] one fixture has so much work, planning training, on-one meetings with players, watching four, five games of the opposition, an incredible amount of work. Watching our training sessions, there’s a lot of work that is needed to prepare for a match.”
