Undressing Mokwena? Sundowns’ Ouaddou makes bold claim after win over Pirates

Mamelodi Sundowns passed two massive assignments in the last couple of days with flying colours.

The first major hurdle was to get into the CAF Champions League quarter-final, an assignment they did perfectly. Miguel Cardoso’s men beat MC Alger – in Group C, 2-0 to advance alongside Al-Hilal Omdurman who had beaten St Eloi Lupopo of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Domestically, the biggest game was on Wednesday against Orlando Pirates; it was the fourth time the two sides were meeting locally across all competitions.

In the MTN8, both sides played to a 1-1 draw in a two-legged semi-final that ended 2-2 in aggregate with the Soweto giants winning the shootoout to eventually go all the way and successfully defend the title.

The last meeting in the Premier Soccer League at Loftus Versfeld Stadium ended 1-1, but on Wednesday night, it was Sundowns who claimed the vital win to make reduce the gap between the teams to three points. Cardoso explains why Pirates were better than Rhulani Mokwena’s side.

Cardoso explains matches against Pirates & MC Alger

“I heard this week that Sundowns always play the same way, sometimes things go well, sometimes things don’t go well, I come from a small village in Portugal, and my family is also very humble,” he told the media.

“And that how we had to live in this game, because the game is like a victory by car, sometimes you climb moutains, sometimes you go down, we worked a lot in terms of approaching the game, we brought different things, and challenges of how teams play.

“This team of Pirates is high quality, I believe they are stronger than MC Alger, very strong, very very strong, that’s why they are competiing in the league this way they are doing, that’s why today was very tough.

“This is way this season, in 90 minutes played we never had beaten them but also never lost, we lost in penalties as you know. It was tough, very tough to prepare for this match,” Cardoso concluded.