Cardoso reflects on Sundowns' TotalEnergies CAF Super Cup loss at home

Mamelodi Sundowns coach Miguel Cardoso says his team lacked the spark in Sunday’s TotalEnergies CAF Super Cup final, where they lost 3-1 to USM Algers. 

The South Africans suffered defeat at their Loftus Stadium, where their supporters were hoping the team would deliver a second TotalEnergies CA Super Cup title, after winning the first in 2016.

This was not to be, as USMA scored inside the first five minutes to take the lead. Iqraam Rainers came off the bench for the injured Brayan Leon to equalise from the penalty spot, but Sundowns found themselves trailing for the second time with eight minute to go to the half-time break. 

The African champions had to deal with an injury to talisman Nuno Santos, who got injured during the warm-up, and had to be replaced from the starting team. 

Coach Miguel Cardoso believes those unfortunate events affected his team’s fluidity and led to the disappointing defeat.

“This was a very unfortunate match played in tricky circumstances. No one could imagine or predict before the match that we would lose a player during the warm-up to injury. It does not happen a lot but it can happen. It is an emotional loss and also a change of strategy that we prepared four days ago, and suddenly we have to bring in another one in,” the Sundowns coach said. 

“Then early in the match, you have to substitute another player because of injury. That is even more misfortune. Our story of the match came in the first half. We made mistakes that in this kind of games are punished by goals. The difference was them taking their chances, and us not taking ours,” Cardoso said.

The two-time TotalEnergies CAF Champions League winners were hoping to make up for their exit in the second preliminary round, where they lost to Angolan side Williete.

Cardoso said even though his team was trailing going into the break, he had belief that they would score in the second half. That did not happen, as Ahmed Khaldi scored for the Algerians to put the game beyond reach.

“At half-time, we felt that it was possible to get ourselves back in the match. We knew that one goal can bring a lot of positive emotions to our team, and some negatives on the opponents. But as soon as I came outside and saw the conditions of the pitch, I knew it was going to be tough for us. We try to play from foot to foot, and the pitch was not easy to play on because of rain. These are not excuses. We could have done better in the first half,” the Sundowns coach concluded.