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Cardoso On PSL Pitches, Sundowns’ Star-Studded Big Squad

  • January 25, 2025
  • 3 min read
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Cardoso On PSL Pitches, Sundowns’ Star-Studded Big Squad

Mamelodi Sundowns coach Miguel Cardoso has given an honest assessment of the standard of PSL teams and the quality of the pitches in the South African top-flight, including his stance on possessing a big squad.

The 52-year-old has been in the job for over a month after he was installed as Manqoba Mngqithi’s successor last month. While the football displayed on the pitch hasn’t reached Sundowns’ standards, the Portuguese tactician has kept the boat floating with positive results.

Having overseen a few domestic matches due to their continental commitments, Cardoso says Betway Premiership teams are competitive but insists it’s a welcome challenge as it keeps his charges on their toes.

“Very competitive teams that don’t give up or nothing, that believe they can compete to win no matter how they play. So, we always find matches where the opponents believe they have a chance to get points,” said the former Esperance de Tunis boss.

“So, that allows us to have big challenges all the time, not take the foot off the pedal otherwise you can lose points as we saw against Magesi. We suffered a goal after one mistake, and we had to put more effort into overcoming that difficulty.”

However, the Downs mentor is unimpressed by the quality of the pitches, highlighting that good pitches can aid South African football to attract widespread interest and global broadcasters, which will generate more money for the league.

“It’s a little bit tough to deal with the quality of the pitches because that’s something I think we should think about in South Africa regarding the watering of the pitches because football is merchandise, it’s something we sell, the public is watching,” Cardoso added.

“If pitches are good, the more broadcasting rights will be sold at higher prices so there’s no reason to try to equalize the games by having slow pitches with low quality where the grass is not cut, and the water is not done. This is not how the show must be done.

“When the level [of pitches] is high, we can sell our rights the best because we have fantastic football and it should be taken abroad, even in Europe, why not? We have wonderful derbies and classic matches that should be sold at high prices. That’s my positive remark, nothing negative.”

Cardoso went on to discuss the squad dynamics at Chloorkop, revealing the reasons behind the Tshwane giants’ culture of having a big pool of players to select from. Moreover, the UEFA Pro License holder says the club is working on outgoings.

“In a normal schedule of games, probably a squad of 24 players plus goalkeepers would be enough but we are not in a normal situation. African [CAF] competitions bring us the challenge of long trips, we had a six-day trip to play AS FAR from the moment we departed, with nights of lack of sleep,” he stated.

“So, that’s why sometimes the squad needs to be extended, not because we want to have the luxury of keeping players, we don’t do that because we also worry about the careers of our players. So, at the moment we are discussing letting [some of] the players go out, but we need to find the right clubs.

“We are even discussing possibilities of finding agreements in Europe so that we can try to promote our players even there. That’s Flemming Berg’s job and he’s doing very well and will for sure bear fruits in the next months.” 

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Hlayisani Magoro

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