Miguel Cardoso claims Sundowns spent 20 minutes preparing for Pirates

The Portuguese mentor made this remark moments following his side’s 4-1 drubbing of their Soweto counterparts in a pulsating Betway Premiership clash at Loftus Stadium on Saturday.

With their busy schedule, Cardoso insists the squad hardly ever has time for a full analysis of matches on their program.

Cardoso explains how they dismantled Pirates to open up a nine-point gap at the top of the table.

"I will continue to tell that we didn't have a lot of time to train. So basically, at the moment we have around 30 training sessions and from those many of them are recovery training sessions for the players that play more regularly,” Cardoso said.

“Tomorrow or the day after the match is the day that we work a lot with the players that don't play so much on team building, that's how we try to get all on the same level.

“The development of this team has come from the investment that players have done on understanding the ideas, how they look at the videos then we analyse the things and how we prepare the game.

“Look, this game with Pirates was prepared in 20 minutes, we had 20 minutes in the pitch where we didn't run, we just positioned the players well. When the ball is from there to here and then when we win in different moments what we do and then video analysis and then team meetings, that's how we prepared because there's no time to train."

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Sundowns were quick off the blocks with goals from Grant Kekana and Lucas Ribeiro before halftime, with the latter adding his second later as well as setting up Teboho Mokoena for the fourth.

Even after such an emphatic victory, Cardoso is adamant the title race is far from over.

"We try to influence each other to follow the plan as much as possible and we can progress. This is what we need to continue to do because from now on our worry is on Tuesday. We have a big responsibility on Tuesday's match as you can imagine because after we win Pirates, the responsibility increases,” the coach added.

“We made a wonderful number of points after the first half of the Championship but there's the second half to play. I told you before and I keep saying, the Championship is far from being finished, very far away but now each match we play, we can close it more and more and more but there's a lot to go, a lot to go.

“So, we just got a small advantage that we should respect and to respect that advantage is to give our best."