Mamelodi Sundowns coach Miguel Cardoso has opened up on his lack of winning trophies since he started coaching after the Portuguese tactician was announced as the new coach for the Brazilians on Tuesday, replacing Manqoba Mngqithi. 

Cardoso, 52, started his journey as a football coach in 1993 when he joined Espinho [youth] in Portugal at the age of 21 years. Since Cardoso started coaching, the former Espérance Sportive de Tunis coach has won only one trophy which was a league title with Espérance last season. 

During his announcement as a Sundowns coach on Tuesday, the 52-year-old tactician revealed that there’s a lot he has done as a coach besides winning trophies and people must stop judging coaches with trophies. 

“It’s really interesting this discussion because we are living in a society or in a sport where people judge CVs by the trophies,” Cardoso said. 

“But sometimes they forget that to win, you don’t need to be in the context where you can truly fight to win. But also sometimes you are in a context where winning is not really getting trophies. 

“For example, I have four/five wins in big competitions and we won zero trophies. I’m speaking about Youth League U19 with Shakhtar Donetsk, I’m speaking about Europa League with Braga, I’m speaking about the final of CAF Champions League with Espérance. 

“Being on those finals, it’s too big a trophy that when you look at my CV, don’t judge because we lost the game but judge it because we won through then. “I know that the society judges you by winning the trophies. So, I went to Tunisia and when I entered I succeeded. I’m the champion of Tunisia at the moment and the club was not in the position of winning that moment. 

“The club was really struggling and even went to the group stages of the Champions League, then we made it because we believed in ourselves. 

“So, when you judge the club or the coach you must judge by a lot of things like how many players he developed when he was in charge at Shakhtar Donetsk and those players are international players now in the world, like Luka Modric, Oleksandr Zinchenko, there’s a lot.” 

 Cardoso and his technical team met the players of Sundowns on Wednesday in their first training session. The first task for the Portuguese coach will be against the Moroccan giant Raja Club Athletic on matchday 3 in the group stage of the CAF Champions League at Loftus Versfeld Stadium on Sunday. 

 The Brazilians are currently in the second position in Group B with only two points after two games, which partly led to the decision to fire Mngqithi. 

Against Raja, the Brazilians will be hoping to register their first victory of the season in the group stage of the Champions League.