Mamelodi Sundowns secured their first Premier Soccer League trophy under coach Miguel Cardoso, and their eighth in a row.
The Portuguese had initially won the Tunisian top-tier with Esperance and other crowns, but his critics questioned whether the tactician had what was needed to deliver for Masandawana. However, the tactician has done the talking on the pitch, not only in the domestic assignments, but abroad as well.
After winning their 15th South African top-flight crown, Masandawana will be aiming to win their second Caf Champions League star when they play Pyramids in a two-legged final.
‘Critics were not attentive to me'
“With all due respect to the media, fans, and people, I don't need external validation. I don't live for that, I live for other things, so people having doubts about me was never a problem for me,” Cardoso told the media.
“So it's for you to understand how people were mistaken regarding many things, and at least they were not really attentive to me or where I came from. [On Sunday] I opened my Instagram, and it made 16 years since I played in the Europa League final as a seasoned coach; SC Braga vs FC Porto in Dublin, it was 16 years ago.”
‘Look at the number of games we won'
“I said on the first day, the trophies a coach wins have to do with where he was, because not every coach; and there are for sure many coaches much better than me, who will never win a trophy because they didn't have a chance to be in the context where winning was possible, but they won many other things,” he continued.
“If you go back and see how many games and the teams we beat to reach the final; Liverpool, Dynamo Kiev, Sevilla, Celtic, Benfica, Lech Poznan, Arsenal just on the way to the final, where we lost 1-0 against Porto, so I don't have that trophy in my career.
“But look at the [number] of games we won until we lost the final, so on that day I was not happy, but I was not a loser – I was a winner, and still looking back after 16 years, I feel proud, and this is something we need to understand,” Cardoso concluded.
