Mamelodi Sundowns chairman Thlopie Motsepe has revealed why the club refused to sack Miguel Cardoso despite growing calls for the Portuguese coach to be shown the door.
Cardoso’s first season at Chloorkop delivered the Betway Premiership title but ended in heartbreak as Sundowns lost the CAF Champions League final to Pyramids FC.
His second campaign was almost the complete opposite. Sundowns finally ended their 10-year wait for Champions League glory, but surrendered their domestic dominance to Orlando Pirates.
Speaking on Mamelodi Sundowns TV, Motsepe admitted there was a difficult period when Cardoso’s position came under scrutiny.
However, the chairman felt it would have been short-sighted to make a decision based purely on a poor run of results.
“Can we really release somebody in this short space, in this bumpy period, after he took us to the final of the Champions League which we hadn’t been in the past nine years?” Motsepe said.
He also pointed to what he saw from Sundowns at the FIFA Club World Cup, where Cardoso’s team competed with freedom and bravery.
“Do we let go of somebody who allowed our players to express themselves? And to play with such bravery at the FIFA Club World Cup, if we’re just going through this period right now?”
Motsepe: ‘Who knows if we would’ve gotten the Champions League?’
Motsepe acknowledged that football is driven by emotion, but insisted that decision-makers must sometimes step away from the immediate pressure.
“Football is a passion-driven business, we live and die by the passion of the game,” he said.
“But it’s very important sometimes, to remove yourself and assess the bigger picture.”
He believes firing Cardoso at that point could have changed the course of Sundowns’ season.
“If we had let go of coach Miguel as you say at that time, who knows if we would have gotten the Champions League? Or the Asia-Africa-Pacific Cup?”
Motsepe said the club knew Cardoso needed to make adjustments, but also saw something developing in the team’s performances.
“There were elements we saw at the Club World Cup, a shoe-shine and piano. A Mamelodi Sundowns that was touching something we didn’t embody before.”
The chairman believes Sundowns became more robust without completely abandoning their footballing identity.
“Maybe we had not been playing as openly as we had done in previous seasons, but where we adapted in openness, we strengthened in our robustness,” he said.
“That was a beautiful lesson we had to learn.”
Why Sundowns hired Cardoso
Motsepe also looked back at Sundowns’ repeated Champions League disappointments before Cardoso’s arrival.
The Brazilians had suffered a string of quarter-final and semi-final exits, despite regularly being among the competition’s strongest sides.
“Champions League after Champions League, after Champions League we were getting knocked out of quarter-finals, semi-finals, quarter-finals, semi-finals,” Motsepe said.
“And it wasn’t because we weren’t the better team.”
Those defeats, and the reaction from Sundowns supporters, convinced Motsepe that the club needed to find a different way to approach the competition.
“I remember being in the stands after every single one of those moments we got knocked out, looking out at the supporters and seeing on their faces this look of disbelief and despair, saying again, ‘Oh my gosh.’ So I felt the same.”
“When we brought Miguel in it was about looking at things differently.”
However, Cardoso was never appointed to completely overhaul Sundowns’ identity.
Motsepe credited sporting director Flemming Berg for highlighting the similarities between Cardoso’s tactical approach and the football already associated with the club.
“His formation and the style he embodies is similar to Sundowns and actually there’s things we can work on here that make us reach a new level,” he said.
That belief ultimately convinced Sundowns not to panic when results turned against Cardoso.
“So you don’t bring someone in and then at the first sign of shakiness, you let him go,” Motsepe said.
“Unless the results and performances are so bad… and team dynamics, losing a dressing room.”
For Sundowns, that decision eventually produced the continental prize they had been chasing for a decade, although it came at the cost of their domestic dominance as Pirates swept the major South African trophies.
This version keeps the Cardoso pressure → Sundowns’ reasoning → Champions League breakthrough storyline moving quickly, which should work better for iDiski Times web readers.