Cardoso outlines Sundowns’ growing concerns over Saleng

Mamelodi Sundowns coach Miguel Cardoso says Monnapule Saleng’s repeated conduct problems have become a matter for the club rather than the coaching staff, after detailing a series of incidents involving the January signing.

Saleng has made a difficult start to life at Sundowns, where expectations around professionalism are particularly high and the club operates a strict zero-tolerance approach to behaviour that threatens team standards.

Cardoso was again asked about the forward on Thursday and said Sundowns had repeatedly tried to support him and help him adapt to the demands of the squad.

“I don’t want to speak too much about that because Saleng is now a club issue, not a coach’s issue,” pointed out the Portuguese with chagrin written on his face.

“He was never a coach’s issue.

“He was always a player we gave a lot of effort to.

“We tried to push him so much towards the group, towards the dynamic of the group, towards the behaviours that a professional player has to have, the mental stability that a professional player has to have inside a very disciplined group and where we have no issues.

“We have a lot of understanding about what are the rules inside the locker room [made] by the players that establish a way to exist, a way to relate and when a player breaks systematically these type of things towards his teammates, towards the coach, towards the club, [then] we don’t know what we can count on.

“There is a moment when you say how can we count on something that we don’t know what he is going to do.

“Imagine you train all week normal, and then you put his name on a list, and the day we are waiting for him in the bus he just literally doesn’t appear.

“These things didn’t happen once.

“It happened twice, three, four times, him being the last to arrive and first to go away.

“It is difficult to have a process of development of a player…we tried in the beginning of the season to give him a lot of love.

Cardoso said the club’s initial response was to offer Saleng further encouragement rather than exclude him from the group.

“So, our attitude regarding him after he failed us [was] let’s not put apart, let’s embrace him, let’s try to give him stability, let’s make him feel important.

“…We wanted to make him integrate into the family but to be part of a family you also need to really want to be in the dynamic of the family.

“It is the last time that I’m going to speak about it is a club issue and no longer a coach’s question,” says Cardoso.

The coach’s comments provide the clearest public account yet of the difficulties surrounding Saleng since his arrival at Chloorkop in January. Cardoso indicated that the concerns have not been limited to one isolated incident, but have involved repeated failures to meet the expectations of his team-mates, coaching staff and the club.

Saleng’s position at Sundowns is therefore now being handled as an internal club matter, with Cardoso making clear that he does not intend to discuss the situation publicly again.

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