Mamelodi Sundowns head coach Miguel Cardoso says the 1-0 win over Esperance Sportive de Tunis was a very positive result, and that the CAF Champions League is for grown-ups, not kids.
Cardoso was speaking after the 1-0 win in the first leg at Loftus Versfeld which some believe is not a safe advantage heading into what is expected to be a hostile environment in Rades on Tuesday evening.
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Whether the glass is half full or half empty, the former Taraji coach, who led them to the final of the competition at the expense of his current club, Sundowns, last season says he needed to make sure they had a win, rather than allowing a late surge from the Tunisian giants ruin their hard work on the day.
“The question of convincing or not convincing is not a really clear concern for anyone, not from us, a 0-0 result at home would be a positive result, a 1-0 at home is a very positive result, but it doesn’t mean anything,” Cardoso said.
“It’s my job to push the players for performance, because I think the correlation between performance and results happen more naturally than performances with bad results, so I need to push for performances and quality football.
“Champions League matches are for grown-ups and not for kids… they are not for naive players. If you suffer a goal in the last ten minutes when Esperance appear on the pitch, then you would be crying in this moment because we gave them a strong advantage.
“My job is to cope with the moments but believe me I think we need to play there to win, but that’s not also being naive in attacking, you need to know how to attack them, because there’s always a moment when you’re attacking, and you suffer from that.
“Those are the moments where Esperance is very strong, so we need to cope with that, the spaces we need to attack, covering spaces, we need to be wise when we lose the ball, how to relate, not to make mistakes and prepared for set-pieces.”
Cardoso said it’s not just about focusing on what Esperance can do in the return leg to fight back into the tie, but rather how they will be able to stop Sundowns and their strengths as he calls on the big players, for big moments next week.
“But they need to also worry about us because we can score, we have been scoring everywhere, so that should be the question. I’m not extra positive about going away, I am just cautious about what I have, a very strong team of Sundowns can go through this quarter-final, that’s what I hope happens as a team,” he continued.
“If we do it, I think we will be closer to what we want, if we don’t play to our limits, and they do it, we will suffer, because they will push until the last minute, but it’s football, as you said what is the champions league?
“It’s bringing the best of the players, emotions. In the big games, the big players appear. We need to push that but from the players themselves. So, let’s prepare in the best way, recover now, fly there, arrive, check who is in the best conditions and approach the game in the best way.”
The two sides meet at the Stade Olympique Hammadi Agrebi on Tuesday at 21h00.
