Cardoso done with ‘repeat offender’ Saleng – ‘It’s now a club issue’

Mamelodi Sundowns head coach Miguel Cardoso has provided further details on the disciplinary issues surrounding Monnapule Saleng, stating that the situation is now out of his hands and rests with the club’s management.

Earlier this month, Cardoso confirmed that Saleng had been removed from first-team training due to multiple disciplinary breaches. These included failing to report for the CAF Champions League final second leg and missing the club’s pre-season tour in Austria.

Ahead of the team’s MTN8 semi-final against Lamontville Golden Arrows, the coach was questioned about a potential return for the player. Cardoso elaborated on Saleng’s repeated misconduct and the extensive efforts made to reintegrate him, ultimately confirming the matter is no longer his primary concern.

“I don’t want to speak too much about that because at the moment Saleng is a club issue, not a coach’s issue,” Cardoso stated on Thursday as quoted by iDiski Times.

Cardoso shares Saleng’s systemic failures

The coach emphasised that the problem was never personal, highlighting the significant effort the technical team invested in the player.

“We tried to push him so much toward the group, toward the dynamic of the group, towards the behaviours that a professional player has to have, the mental stability that a professional player has to have,” he explained.

🗣️ 𝐌𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐞𝐥 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐨𝐬𝐨 𝐨𝐧 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐚𝐩𝐮𝐥𝐞 𝐒𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐠:

“These things did not happen once, did not happen twice, three, four times… being the last to arrive, the first to go…”#Sundowns | #MTN8 pic.twitter.com/w6pN8cMKZP

— Lorenz Köhler (@Lorenz_KO) August 20, 2026

Cardoso pointed out that the team operates under a set of rules established by the players themselves. He described Saleng’s actions as a systematic violation of these standards, which affected his teammates, the coaching staff, and the club as a whole.

“When a player systematically breaks these kinds of things… we don’t know what we can count on,” he said. “Imagine you train all of the week normal and then you put his name on a list, and the day we are waiting for him in the bus he just doesn’t appear.”

Sundowns reveals previous efforts to help

The coach stressed that these were not isolated incidents. “So these things did not happen once, did not happen twice, three, four times… being the last to arrive, the first to go away. It’s difficult to have a process of a development of a player.”

Cardoso recounted the team’s initial approach to embrace Saleng rather than isolate him after his first transgressions. “Our idea with him after he failed us, let’s not put him apart, let’s embrace him, let’s try to give him stability… let’s make him feel important.”

He even recalled a moment where he personally tried to connect with the player, saying, “My assistant showed me there was a moment that I was dancing with him in the middle of the circle myself—trying to make him exactly understand how we wanted to integrate him in the family.”

However, Cardoso concluded that the player must also show a desire to belong. “To be part of the family, you also need to want to be in the dynamic of the family. And it’s now the club’s time to speak about because it’s a club issue and no more a coach’s question.”