Komphela urges Mamelodi Sundowns to show character after USM Alger defeat

Mamelodi Sundowns must respond with resilience after their 3-1 loss to USM Alger in the CAF Super Cup final at Loftus Versfeld Stadium on Sunday, senior coach Steve Komphela said.

The result came only a few weeks after Sundowns were unexpectedly eliminated in the Champions League preliminaries. It was also their first defeat of the season in all competitions.

Komphela said the setbacks would test the club’s ability to recover, but believed Sundowns had the experience and strength within their squad and technical team to move forward.

“This is how your character gets built. And I don’t think we are the first ones to go through this, and we are not going to be the last ones,” Komphela told the media in the mix zone after the final.

He pointed to previous occasions when Sundowns had been forced to respond to disappointment and said the current squad was equipped to do so.

“Sundowns has been in situations where we needed to dust ourselves and show character. We have a great dressing room with experienced players, and a technical team that’s strong enough and that has a way to focus on what has to be looked at. As they always say, this is breakfast for champions.”

Komphela also revealed that an unnamed USM Alger player had offered encouragement immediately after the final, a message he said had left a lasting impression.

“It’s funny because as soon as the match came to an end, one of the players from USM Alger came through and said something very strange. He said, ‘You guys are a big team, you will recover.’ For me, that was profound. Sometimes in life, we need reminders about who we are and this is the one,” he said.

Sundowns had entered the match as Champions League winners, while USM Alger were winners of the Confederation Cup. Komphela acknowledged that expectations had favoured his side but said the outcome demonstrated that football did not always follow conventional logic.

“We wanted to win it, unfortunately, it couldn’t fall our way. You don’t want to start throwing forward and get paralysed by the fact that you start looking at things that are coming,” he said.

“But where we are, we are hurting and also for our supporters. And the fact that you are the Champions League winners, when you play folks who are also winners, but in the Confederation [Cup], logic or common sense or expectation would be Champions League winners should win and sometimes football is not like that. We regret the result, we wanted it different. Unfortunately, it did not come our way.”

Sundowns coach Miguel Cardoso highlighted the difficult circumstances surrounding the match, including the loss of Nuno Santos during the warm-up and the early withdrawal of striker Bryan Leon after 15 minutes.

“Of course, we can only speak about a very unfortunate match played in tricky circumstances. It is not normal that we lose a player during warm-up, where we should be preparing them to start,” Cardoso told the media at his post-match press conference.

He added: “I think we also made mistakes that at this level are penalised by goals.”