Sundowns players adapt to ‘online learning’

Mamelodi Sundowns have adopted a similar approach to keep their players tactically aware and “sharpen the sword”, as Downs head coach Pitso Mosimane puts it.

“Jingles” gives his players assignments in the form of games to analyze and report back to him and his technical team – so far so good, Mosimane says.

“We give them international games and not our games because when you give them our games it can be boring. We give them games every three days. If you are a right-winger, choose a right-winger in that team and tell us what he is doing right and how is his behaviour offensively and defensively as an individual and as a group,” said Mosimane.

“And when I say a group, I don’t mean the whole team, I’m talking about the midfielders, how does he interact with them and how does he interact with his right-back if he is a winger. The response has been unbelievable and that is how we keep them tactically aware because we don’t want to start from the beginning.

“Physically and tactically we are there and I would say psychologically as well because nobody is complaining. There has been a little bit of a problem with those who don’t easily sleep because it is normal. I was also sleeping in different hours and I had to go back to the normal routine,” Mosimane added.

Before President Cyril Ramaphosa placed the country on lockdown over a month ago, Masandawana have been playing quite a number of games with little time in between. All indications were there that the defending Absa Premiership champions needed a bit of a break, but this, is more than what they asked for.

“As Sundowns we needed this break but we needed about seven to 10 days and that would have been very good for us to get back because we had so many games that we played. We got that and some niggling injuries out of the way but now it has been long and it has gone beyond the break that we needed.”

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