Mamelodi Sundowns coach Miguel Cardoso insists he has no advantage over his former team Esperance ahead of their CAF Champions League meeting on Tuesday.
Sundowns host the Tunisia giants in the first leg of their CAF Champions League quarter-final at Loftus Versfeld on Tuesday and it is a match that they will hope to use Cardoso’s inside knowledge of Esperance to win.
Cardoso worked at Esperance for one year, guiding them to the league title last season, before he left in October 2024, joining Sundowns two months later.
Knowing Esperance not important, says Cardoso
That means most of the players are those he is familiar with but the Portuguese tactician insists while it will be an emotional match, his knowledge of the players will not be so important as there have been two coaching changes since he left.
“I think I just know the players at the moment, some of them because others also changed, but you should understand what is important is that there's a new coach that, for sure, brought new ideas, so a new way to play,” Cardoso told CAF.
“That also implies that the players have different tasks in the team, so knowing the players in the end is perhaps not that important – it might be important, after we study them to the limit, what they are doing now and what they have been doing since we left.
How do the two teams compare?
“And then how we are going to cope with the way they play, with the way they want to establish their game, so that we can obviously achieve the result we need to win and go through this stage.”
Esperance dismissed Laurentiu Reghecampf during the international break and replaced him with Maher Kanzari who is tasked with leading them to league and Champions League glory this season.
Sundowns and Esperance faced off in the semi-final of the competition last season, the Tunisian giants winning, to make it to the final where they lost to Al Ahly and there will be revenge on the mind for Cardoso’s men.
