Steve Komphela: Sundowns' poor pre-season caused difficult complications

Domestically, Sundowns suffered early exits: MTN8 semi-final defeat to Orlando Pirates, Carling Knockout last-16 penalty loss to Marumo Gallants, and Nedbank Cup round-of-16 elimination by TS Galaxy.

In the Betway Premiership, dropped points in a draw with Kaizer Chiefs in May and a 3–2 final-day loss to TS Galaxy left their title defence under threat.

"If you don't have a good pre-season, it does affect almost everything in your programme. You're likely to face injuries and coming from matches where you have not had enough rest, you're likely to have lack of form, burnout of players, there's just a lot you will juggle," Komphela said on The Pitchside Podcast.

"With all that, nobody wants to know, you may come up with clarity, explanations, eloquent excuses, not at Sundowns, so it was the most difficult part of our season. As the technical team, we were trying to hold onto the DNA of Sundowns.

"Then the MTN8 setback, the Carling setback, Nedbank (Cup) setback, all these are serious setbacks and then we had the Betway Premiership we had to fight for, obviously that's history, we know all the challenges.

"All these weighed heavily on the player's mental part. You are now panicking, becoming too anxious and it may affect the players.

"Then we went to Mbombela, TS Galaxy and I think it was in that dressing room, where we took a resolution: 'we cannot approach tomorrow with yesterday's emotions' and then we had to change gears and face the Champions League (final)."