Miguel Cardoso hints at Mamelodi Sundowns approach against Fluminense

With the PSL side needing to win, while their South American counterparts only need a point, Cardoso believes the match will be on a knife’s edge. 

The Portuguese mentor pointed out that the Miami weather conditions would also play a part in their ability to carry out that same momentum. 

"I was expecting that in this World Cup, we could take ourselves to the limit in terms of our physical impact on the game – which means make more distance, more actions of high intensity," said Cardoso.

"But when you play under the temperatures we are playing, obviously that is standard, it's not possible to take it [to the limit], because we play on the limit before we arrived at these metrics.

"But, anyway, we have been reaching interesting outputs in terms of fitness and performance, but I totally agree that having the ball in the match can be decisive to manage the intensity.

"It might not seem like it, but the team who has the ball runs less, and mentally they are submitted to a less aggressive state."

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Cardoso added that the fixture would be like a chess match, given the Group F permutations.

"Obviously that we have similar styles, despite having different principles of the game, that will make it a fight or a war between the two teams to try and take the game to their side," he added.

"That's why I was speaking about earlier that we need to take the game as much as possible to our comfort zone, because when we'll be playing in our comfort zone, the effort that is lower is the effort with which we train."