CAPE TOWN – Mamelodi Sundowns fans reacted with great joy when Brazilian defender Ricardo Nascimento announced his return to South Africa on a social media post on Monday.
Nascimento’s brief post included a video showing him entering the club’s premises, and was captioned: “Going back to doing what I love the most!”
Nascimento, who has been capped 53 times for Sundowns, suffered a long-term injury a few months ago.
There were serious doubts that he would come back to South Africa after returning to Brazil for treatment and rehabilitation. Subsequently, he received treatment in the USA.
At one stage, Nascimento had requested that Sundowns release him, but he did not insist on it later.
The lanky Nascimento reported for duty at Chloorkop, the club’s training facility on Monday, and it will be some time before he regains match fitness to be considered for selection. He would have returned earlier, but had permission to attend to family matters, hence the delay.
His timely return means Sundowns have a few days to register him for this season ahead of the deadline on 31 August. It would appear that he probably needs about three weeks of training before he joins the fray.
The left-footed Nascimento joined Sundowns in 2016, and shortly afterwards, he helped the club win the CAF Champions League in the same year and the CAF Super Cup a year later.
While Nascimento will be waiting in the wings to make an impact, the recently released Keletso Makgalwa has already proved his worth at his new club Swallows.
Sundowns co-coach Rulani Mokwena was asked to explain why the promising Makgalwa, a product of Sundowns Academy, was not retained for the season.
Over the weekend, Makgalwa supplied an assist which led to Swallows scoring a last-gasp winner against the Premiership newcomers Royal AM (in the guise of Bloemfontein Celtic). His inch-perfect cross was headed home by Mbulelo Wambi in added injury time.
“The Keletso situation is a very simple one,” Mokwena told the media. “We are grateful Swallows showed an interest, and the coach Brandon Truter not only believes in youngsters but believes in Keletso.
“The little bit of experience we have with regards to working with young players is that they reach a certain point where you’ve got to make decisions and sometimes the decision is to keep him, train him, coach him and he might not get a lot of game time.
“You also have situations where you either have to sell or loan the player.”
IOL Sport