Sundowns give insight into European pre-season tour

Mamelodi Sundowns have offered insight into their European pre-season tour ahead of the new DStv Premiership season.

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The Brazilians landed in the Netherlands on Tuesday where they have a number of friendlies lined-up against Dutch topflight sides Go Ahead Eagles and Sparta Rotterdam before rounding off their trip against second tier team NAC Breda.

However, their first game will be against Belgian Pro League Champions Gent on Friday (today). Sundowns goalkeeper coach Wendel Robinson shared more details of their schedule abroad.

“The first match we will play against Gent Belgium premier League team, second match will be Go Ahead Eagles, third match will be Sparta Rotterdam and then we’ll finish off next Friday [when] we play against NAC Breda, who play in the first division here in the Netherlands,” Robinson revealed.

“This camp is to take the opposition upper-level, because you know we are preparing for a very, very big season with a number of competitions.

“This camp we’re basically looking for stronger competition [because] this season the club will be involved in a number of competitions besides the DStv Premiership and CAF Champions League. There is the Nedbank Cup, the MTN8, we also have the Carling Black Label Cup thrown in and and as well as the African football league as well, so it’s going to be a really really tough and difficult season so this camp was important for us to to really come out and test ourselves. I think with this camp we are really trying to play against very, very strong opposition and see how we fare.”

Robinson also highlighted their main objective for the friendly games following their camp in Rustenburg before flying out of South Africa for the week and half tour to Europe.

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“The camp is going well, obviously it’s the second camp. The first one was at Royal Marang [and with] that camp the focus was more on the physical elements where the team worked hard on improving their fitness, the base fitness moving to the speed and and the power phase,” he said.

“This particular phase in the Netherlands is where we will focus on the tactical and technical side which means that we will be focusing a lot on how we play, that is the reason why we have four matches planned against very very strong opponents.”