Miguel Cardoso criticises Buffalo City pitch after Sundowns rescue draw

Mamelodi Sundowns head coach Miguel Cardoso has criticised the Buffalo City Stadium playing surface after Antonio van Wyk’s late goal secured a 1-1 draw against Chippa United in the Betway Premiership.

Cardoso said the conditions were not suitable for football and questioned why Sundowns had been required to play at the venue when their title rivals had faced Chippa at a different stadium.

Defending champions Orlando Pirates have already played Chippa United this season, but that match was held at Jonsson Kings Park Stadium in Durban.

“These fans deserve something different,” Cardoso told SuperSport after the match. “It is like you invite them to their home and then give them nothing. The conditions to play football were horrible.”

He also compared South Africa’s facilities with those in Morocco, referring to the country’s stated intention after the World Cup to reduce the gap between the two nations.

“After the World Cup, South Africa said that they wanted to reverse the distance from Morocco,” he said. “But with these conditions, the distance from Morocco is increasing more and more because Morocco understands the conditions required to play football, bring a better game, improve the level of the players and allow the national teams to become better.”

Cardoso said the poor pitches would make the task facing Pitso Mosimane more difficult in the future if the country’s best players and teams continued to play on them.

“It is a hell of a job for Pitso Mosimane to do in the future if the players and the best teams have to play on pitches like this,” he added. “It is not proper to play football.”

Despite his frustration, Cardoso felt Sundowns had shown commitment and deserved to take something from the match, although he believed the equaliser arrived later than it should have.

“We made our best and fought with all the conditions we had,” he said. “I think we were committed to taking three points from here and, in the end, we were rewarded. But the reward came very late considering how the boys played during the match.”

The Sundowns manager also suggested the venue gave Chippa an advantage, saying their 4-3-3 formation worked effectively in the conditions and that the pitch appeared to favour teams intent on defending and restricting space.

“We know that their 4-3-3 shifts very well, especially when teams like us are brought to a pitch like this,” Cardoso said. “The best teams that did not play here are competing with us, and we will see where the other one will play. At the moment, we are the only team from the top that has played here.”

He added that the pitch seemed unnecessarily small and argued that the match became more of a physical contest than a football game.

“I think we played a good match considering the situation, how slippery the pitch was, the difficulty and how uneven it was,” he said. “It was more of a fight than football, the way the game should have been played.”

Cardoso concluded that losing would have been an even greater injustice for Sundowns.

“With a little bit of a reward, which is absolutely unfair, it is already unfair to get a draw,” he said. “It would have been absolutely unfair to lose a match like this.”