Mamelodi Sundowns boss Miguel Cardoso names Pyramids final as his toughest match

Mamelodi Sundowns head coach Miguel Cardoso says the first leg of the 2024/25 CAF Champions League final against Pyramids remains the most difficult match of his time at the club.

The Egyptian side scored a late equaliser to secure a 1-1 draw at Loftus Versfeld Stadium, leaving Cardoso frustrated by what he regarded as a damaging sequence of mistakes.

Cardoso marked his 100th game in charge of Sundowns with a 2-1 victory over Al Ahli Saudi in the Intercontinental Cup. The win earned the club a FIFA African-Asian Pacific Cup shortly before the FIFA break.

The Portuguese coach joined The Brazilians in December 2024 and has experienced both success and setbacks during his spell in charge. Towards the end of last season, Sundowns faced the prospect of completing the 2025/26 campaign without silverware.

Orlando Pirates were favourites to win the Betway Premiership, while Sundowns still had to overturn the situation in their CAF Champions League second-leg match against AS FAR Rabat.

Cardoso, who previously coached Esperance, eventually guided the Tshwane club to their second CAF Champions League title. Sundowns won the second leg 2-1 in Morocco to complete a 3-2 aggregate victory.

Looking back on his time at the club, Cardoso identified the home meeting with Pyramids as the match that had affected him most.

“The home match with Pyramids, 100 percent. Because I see that game. I think the goal from Pyramids is a sequence of mistakes,” Cardoso said on the club’s official YouTube Channel.

“It was painful, because that goal changed the dynamic of the final and I also understood that it would be very difficult to eventually overcome.”

Pyramids’ equaliser came in the closing stages, a moment Cardoso felt was particularly difficult for his players to recover from in a final.

“We could but it would be difficult to overcome that emotional moment when you suffer a goal in the final, in the last minutes,” he added.

The Sundowns coach also explained his approach to defending a lead. He said his preference was not simply to introduce more defenders, but to keep posing a threat to the opposition.

“I’m the kind of coach who thinks that defending matches is not putting defenders, it is putting people in the front, it is threatening the opponent,” Cardoso said.

He acknowledged, however, that retaining possession was another important way of protecting a result, and said Sundowns had improved in that area.

“But I also think that protecting the result is having the ball and that’s something that nowadays we’re doing better but still we’re always on that,” he said.

“Even in this match I think we could have stayed more time on the ball until the end and that Pyramids match I felt that the players wanted to defend low, they wanted to protect the result.”

Sundowns went on to lose the final second leg against Pyramids 2-1, with the Egyptian side winning 3-2 on aggregate.