Mamelodi Sundowns are on the verge of becoming champions of the CAF Champions League for the second time, but first, they will have to conquer Egyptian side, Pyramids FC when they meet in the second leg of the CAFCL final on Sunday night at the 30 June Stadium.
The last time the two sides met, a 1-1 draw was witnessed in the first leg in Pretoria. With such a result that is in favour of the Egyptian outfit due to the away goal rule, Masandawana will have to dig deep, convert as many goals and tighten the defence to get a favourable result.
Speaking to coach Miguel Cardoso as we look ahead to a very important moment in African football, the tactician stated how important the journey to reach the final has been for his side.
“The second leg of the final is an exciting moment for everyone but it’s also a moment for us to celebrate football in Africa. It’s a great achievement for me as the head coach to lead a wonderful group of players to a moment they have fought all their lives for. My wish for this game is to release all the unimportant emotions in order for us to perform at our best,” he said.
The coach went on to state that the result in Pretoria was not what they desired but he expects his side to give their maximum effort in the 90 minutes while also not undermining their opponent who equally fought hard to get to the finals. He said: “we understand that we didn’t achieve the result we would have liked to achieve in the first leg. We think we could have played better than we did. We understand that we need to do better tomorrow and we also understand that we are playing against one of the best teams in Africa.”
“We will need to take care of all moments of the game. We need to focus on the organised attacks and setpieces. Tomorrow is one game and whoever wins, is the champion. We look forward to an exciting and demanding game,” he continued.
Mamelodi Sundowns will do clash against Pyramids FC on Sunday night at the 30 June Stadium in Egypt. Kick-off has been scheduled for 19H00, live on SuperSport TV and SABC Sports.
The management must help us with one thing, they must just fire this coach with his useless defensive football. Sundowns has lost their possesion and attacking football under this Cardoso.It is even worse to keep Mshishi on the bench and not liston to football fans accross South Africa that he must play Zwane.Rulani and Mnqithi must come back and take us to the world cup after all we qualified to the world cup because of points collected by them while there were still with us.I hate to see sundowns losing because of not playing our tiki taka attacking football, I would rather lose with good football than making pyramids look good. Why always attack when already trailing? It isin our DNA to play offensive football with lots of opportunities ,now with his approach he has killed players like Rebeiro in this match, and also playing them out of position.There is no flair in that team anymore and I wont blame our players because they play according to his instructions.Cardoso must go please.
At this point, the only thing that would make us happy is the resignation of Cardoso and Flemmingburg, to save us from the Club World Cup embarrassment. I don’t know what it would take for
Cardoso to understand that Sundowns only knows how to attack, not to defend😏 Poor display from the starting line up, too much playing at the back in the first half with 68% of ball possession but 1 shot on target. R.Williams Every attack is a goal 😏😏Allende was just a passenger and yet not subbed. Themba Zwane would’ve penetrated that Pyramid defense, but this clueless coach doesn’t believed in him, we’ve destroyed many many teams with Themba Zwane before, unless they are also forcing him to retire like Hlompho Kekana. With this coach, in the helm, I don’t even look forward to Club World Cup.
Atleast Rhulani won the Super Cup, beating these Egyptians, this one can’t even score, it’s all clumsy goals, even to Beat Al Ahly, it was by share luck of an own goal😏😏 Now Sundowns is less respectable and every team thinks they could beat us and it started here at home when we were beaten by Chiefs and Pirates😏😏
Cardoso must leave us like Mokoena and Manqoba as he too only won the league 😏😏😏!!!!!!
I don’t agree with members!! Since we won the star in 2016 we failed to reach the final with those coaches and individual players around!! Congratulations to Cardoso for reaching the final! What let’s do won today is defence not the attach! What will Themba Zwane would to stop Kekana from making that mistake? Aubrey allows that guy to cross the ball and Kekana instead of clearing he tries to be too smart for nothing and he gives away the ball!! Cordoso has to be given a full season and see what he can do!!
That doesn’t mean it makes it fine to accept this self inflicted loss. We played the most entertaining football during those years, now we don’t even look like scoring at any given point, where have you seen Sundowns with 1 shot at goal in the first half? This performance is the poorest performance in CAF since those failed years of Rhulani and Manqoba and please don’t tell us about that own goal that led us to the final.
There’s nothing Zwane would’ve done to stop Kekana, but he would’ve atleast created a goal to equalize and smart coaches like Hugo Bros, doesn’t want that nonsense of building from the back because he saw the dangers of it after losing our first game in the previous AFCON.
Member I respect your opinion and you are correct about Kekane and Modiba they shoud have stuck to basics, however our players were put under pressure by the defensive approach and game plan of Cardoso, we were very poor ,not playing at all because of the style of the coach, we put our defenders under pressure because we could not string and connect passes the Sundowns way.None of those balls they scored would have troubled our defense if we had attacked and put pressure on them the way we did in the last 20 minutes of the game.
Sundowns must fire this useless man, Cardoso is doom he proved us now, and I think the is someone remoting him, how could you bring Mothiba a final, where did you see him that is combining well with his teammates, he never played him on a league match, boom last 90 minutes of a final, he brings him… Cardoso you are a stupid.. With this quality of players you come and play nonsense, Sundowns is a football playing team,you once said the best way of defending is to attack but practical you fail stand on your words, Going with Cardoso in a club world cup is an embarrassment because he will go the and defend, or use new players.. I please management not to give Cardoso that opportunity because is going to embarrass us the, rather take DDC coach to CWC if we loose we will understand…
I have never seen Sundowns playing poorly like this, not having scoring opportinities.No combination play nothing.It is even worse to defend at home in the first leg and still draw the game.We will be embarased in yhe world cup if we take Cardoso with us.Even analists abbroad they are already talking about Sundowns possession football and fency our chances against our World Cup opponents but with this Cardoso they wont see that happening.
This man called coach Cardoso must be thoroughly investigated, no ways a professional coach can think and act like this on a biggest final in Africa, he comes and playing a player that have never play game for the past 10 months even a 30 minutes… He is changing our system of playing defending even at home, the whole sundowns 2 shot on target the whole 90 minutes at home… He doesn’t know anything and not even closer to shoe shine.. If Flameburg is the behind this nonsense then they must both fokof, this Burg he brought lot of South Americans for nothing Savendra, Esquivel, Suarez, now is Cardoso a coach that doesn’t see an important game.. No wonder his press conference was poor very poor, he didn’t promise us anything but he was busy praising opponents… He is a sell out, he sold us… Sundowns was fine under south african coaches.. They must give Dan Dan a chance too… We don’t need north Africans again they play nonsense football.
Truth be told the best thing our management should do is to find us a new coach before the World Cup this one doesn’t know what he’s doing.In the game against Chippa he said he couldn’t play Zwane and he’s protecting him because because during pitch inspection he noticed that the pitch was hard and bumpy ,what was he protecting him against during both CAF final legs?.What members don’t realise is that,counting from the last game of the group stage we played 7 games and only one against Esperance in the championships league.This man is clueless,we complained about Kekana and Williams’ playing at the back last week and they still continued to do the same thing even tonight,they played like there’s still 3rd and 4th legs to be played,our play in general lacked hunger and sense of urgency,even the 1st goal we conceded Kekana was trying to be smart in our 18 area.Allende was nowhere to be seen in both legs yet he played 90 + minutes in those games.The Sundowns we all know and love is lost,if we don’t fire this coach we’re going to lose many good players because he plays only his favourite and the damage he would have made will be irreparable.The Williams issue also needs special attention the guy thinks he’s knows football too much when he’s leaking goals.I urge management to really review the coach’s decisions and performance in the champions league because we don’t need a coach to win our local.With him at the helm we are going to be humiliated in the club World Cup.The team is poor and regressing under his leadership even our young players are nowhere to be seen.I really think we need a coach of Pyramids coach’s mentality of attack and attack home or away.My last question is why did we wait until we conceded 2 goals for us to start playing offensive football?.
Cardoso a mastr of tactical bankruptcy,I mean Modiba is a liability&we r insulted 2 say Modiba is a defender.Lebohang Mothiba never played football the whole year only 2 b brought in such a crucial moment when we needed a goal,jst 2 accommodate his javelin football.So in actual fact management fired 2 local coaches who worked wonders 4 Sundowns 2 qualify 4 CWC only 2 take credit 4 a job he never worked 4.We suffered a lot of tactical blunders by defenders who ddnt deserve 2 play 4 our team at all bt alas at the expense of Khoza,Cupido and Mvala let alone excluding Lunga when Modiba always cost us dearly in every high profile game.Zwane is being managed by being bench what a fool is this Cardoso character.Since when Sundowns believed in these clueless Europeans hay anyone who also brought this Fleming Berg palooka needs his head 2 b examined.This always bring wrong material at Sundowns 4 what.
Morning masandawana, im heartbroken because of the decision made by cadoso and some of our players, first cadoso keeps on playing modiba knowing that modiba is weak defensive and sometimes forget that he is playing. the mistake that kekana made yesterday is i unforgivable and is clear that we need someone who can replace him permanently caz we can’t rely on him. why cadoso is not playing zwane? because this thing is boring now,. maybe is time for him to go.
I fully concur with Tso Vilakazi, we were just lucky to reach the final and our luck ran out. Orlando Pirates and Pyramids were the best teams in this Champions League edition. I did say it before we played Esperance that Esperance and Al Ahly were at their weakest in this Champions League edition. Let me also remind those who’re praising Cradoso for reaching the finals that we did so without beating any team in the knockout stages, so expecting us to win the final on the away-goal rule was going to be asking for too much from the lucky gods. I’m not going to be tempted to point fingers at our players as those players are not selecting themselves. We’ve largely been playing ugly football since Cardoso took over, and I solely blame the chairman for all this mess.
We were not Lucky just we were not playing according to our style, a team score a goal because of the opponent mistakes so own goal is part of the game mistakes because it happens when you pressed so the is no luck there.. Stop listening dom analyzer who analyze based on feelings. We were not luck not at all just our coach sold this two games, he must be investigated simple…professional coach who change system of playing on a big final like this…
Esperance fired him after wining the league because of playing defensive football.This coach is playing the players exactly they way he said during one interview,he said when he arrived he didn’t like Sales,you can see some players play the whole game even when they are off form or tired just because he love them,you don’t have to love a player to play him,you must love their performance.He is over working Mokoena and Allende because of his love for them,you can tell by the way they are playing they are tired,he doesn’t refresh them.I can bet my last dollar the guy doesn’t love Zwane,Aubaas and Rayners.His coaching tactics are very poor,you can’t replace a striker after scoring in the final when you need goals or a goal to win a game,even against Chiefs in the Nedbank cup he replaced Aubaas and Rayners during halftime when they were the two best performing players during that game.If we are serious about taking the team to the next level this man must no go to USA with us,the team will never improve under this man,even our young players will never get chance.A 19 year old boy was a star in the final of the Uefa champions league for PSG,currently the best player in the world is a 17 year LAMINE from Barca yet our 20 years old players can’t even make a match day squad.The other elephant in the room is the masters of playing from the back Williams and Kekana these two are working against us,Wiliams doesn’t even deserve to be our captain, i would give Mudau or Mokoena the arm band,Mudau should play as a central defender and Kekana should go to the stands,whenever i see Kekana and Williams in the starting 11 i know we are going to play chameleon football.Management please do something before is too late.