Mamelodi Sundowns head coach Miguel Cardoso has questioned the amount of red cards his side has received this season.
Denis Onyango received his marching orders late into their 3-1 win over Marumo Gallants last night at the Dr. Petrus Molemela Stadium.
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It marked the seventh red card for Masandawana this season across all competitions, with six coming under the guidance of Cardoso.
“The way the game finished wasn’t the best, in terms of dealing with [another] red card, the cards are becoming too easy to be given to our players, it has nothing to do with Marumo,” Cardoso said after the game.
“It has to do in general with teams against Sundowns always find moments to stop the game, to deal with moments where we are stronger, closer to [scoring] and it happened again – it’s a way to manage the game, I can’t say anything.
“But it those moments I never see yellow cards for players [time wasting], and then we saw Denis, he had to kick a ball in front, he received a yellow card and then after that it was an action for a second yellow and the red…
“I think the red cards for Sundowns are becoming cheap, they are coming out very easy.”
The Sundowns boss felt his side were able to navigate the incident well, considering they were out of substitutions and were forced to put in an outfield player, Tapelo Morena, into goals for the final six minutes of the league game.
“They coped very well with the situation as we had no more susbtitutions to do, so we had to find a solution, Tapelo was the player we decided to put in goal because he has experienced it already,” Cardoso said.
“It was important to manage that six minute and have the ball as much as possible – in that moment we had to deal with the freekick…
“But okay thank God it was not on target and after that it was quite simple to manage the game as our players have the quality to keep the ball as much as possible and deal with one or two counter attacks, it wasn’t as difficult as it could have been.”
Sundowns went 12 points clear of second placed Orlando Pirates with their comeback win, albeit having played three games more than their title rivals.
