‘Coaches aren’t magicians!’ Cardoso faults FIFA CWC, early games against Pirates & Chiefs for struggles

Mamelodi Sundowns coach Miguel Cardoso believes the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup and initial tough assignments might have contributed to the club's struggles.

The defending Premier Soccer League champions haven't lost a game in regulation time, but are still out of the MTN8 after a semi-final's penalty shoot-out loss against holders Orlando Pirates. In the South African top-tier, Masandawana have three wins and two draws.

Sundowns have been struggling to play a beautiful game but end up winning ugly, with critics pointing fingers at Cardoso. However, the tactician insists he is not the one to blame for a struggling start.

Sundowns' season is what it is

“Preparation, that is the absolute key question to be done. And no one in South Africa has ever experienced what we are experiencing ourselves in the moment. And yet, that’s why I speak about how strong we are inside the club, because we know what we’re going to leave. We knew the moment we would have to face,” he opened up to the media.

“Obviously, playing a semi-final of MTN8 against [Orlando] Pirates takes us to the limit, even before. Because if the draw had been our friend, and we could have, with all the respect, taken Sekhukhune [United], or probably we could, or Stellies, it would have been eventually a more. We played times Pirates away; we played [Kaizer] Chiefs away.

“That was a match that we had to change as a feature for the away match because we had no stadium available for the match, and then we still have to play Stellenbosch away. So, our season, for the moment, it’s what it is,” Cardoso added.

“In the middle of the whole match, we played Magesi and Richards Bay, so we knew the moment we would have to face them. And that’s why I’m always speaking about how we are strong enough, and we don’t need the people from outside who just try to destabilize us.”

‘We need to respect players' work'

“When people don’t understand that the influence from the outside on a team and try to induce emotional status or create noise around it, it just makes us stronger, because we become stronger. That’s the nature of Mamelodi Sundowns to live through and out of the difficult moments, become stronger. 

“The team is showing that and going along with your question. Exactly, victories like today are stated on strong values, on strength, on the power of the group, on the cohesion of the group, and on the peace that we live in a daily basis, and day by day, will become stronger because we’re going to have capacity to go back on the physical levels, start to be able to run more and mostly to arrive on the end of the matches with a little bit less fatigue on the Brain, so that we continue to produce the game we want to play. 

“But we need to respect the work of the players and the work of the players respecting it and the work of everybody is exactly understanding what is happening with this team. Because if you go to Europe and you take a look, and I have friends in many teams in Europe that also play the Club World Cup, and or they changed a lot, the players, or the ones that didn’t change, they are struggling. I remember how PSG started the season. Of course, when you have extra quality players, you can still win, and you have this, when you have the strongest spirit, you can still win. But it’s the fluidity of what you produce that exactly is not the same,” Cardoso continued.

Masandawana to continue rotating players

“We also understand that we coaches, we players, we all together, we understand that, and we need to understand that in the moment the fatigue kicks us, we have to rely on the bravery, on the capacity to fight, on the capacity to manage the games, and even myself. Probably sometimes I would like to make some substitutions, but I have another ones to help the players to sustain it’s like a cyclist that wants to go up to the mountain when he’s in total shape, he goes up and he doesn’t.

“It’s a matter of managing it. But when it kicks you halfway, you can lose seven, eight minutes on a stage just because the hammer kicked your head. And it’s sometimes 15 minutes, 20 minutes to finish the game. It’s kicking us because we are still a little bit and look how we are working now. We have a break, but some players, five players will go to the under-20s. Five players will go for the A-national team.  We will try at the same time that we still need to give rest, we’ll make cycles of work that we can bring the boys a little bit up and balance the group.

“As much as people think that the coaches are magicians, the coaches depend on the players' availability and quality. And as I was saying, as much as people think we coaches are magicians, we just gather souls and quality, hearts, souls, and quality, because who expresses them are the players,” Cardoso concluded.