Draw with Orlando Pirates highlights growing Premiership parity, says Sundowns' coach Cardoso

The current Betway Premiership season will have a different script due to different casts compared to previous campaigns, but Mamelodi Sundowns are ready to ensure that they remain the ultimate winners.

Sundowns were held to a 1-all draw by direct title rivals Orlando Pirates at a sold-out Loftus Versfeld in the nation’s capital on Saturday.

While the result didn’t help either team’s cause – Sundowns remained top of the log with 22 points, three ahead of the fourth-placed Pirates – it was the champions who felt that they had lost two points.

The Brazilians had arrived at the match as favourites, given the fact that Pirates hadn’t beaten them at home since 2018, while they were 4-1 victors in the last league match at the same venue last season.

But Cardoso viewed the result through a different lens. He believes it was a fair outcome, given the equality of prowess this season, as the two teams also played to 1-1 draws over two legs in the MTN8 semi-final before Pirates eventually won on penalties.

And that’s not all. Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs enjoyed thorough pre-season preparations, holding camps in Spain and the Netherlands respectively. Sundowns, meanwhile, didn’t have the best pre-season as they started late due to a heavy schedule, which included the FIFA Club World Cup in the US.

“We’ll, for sure, have competition for the title this season,” Cardoso said. “I remember during the launch of the Betway Premiership, I said this championship will have a different story — it’ll be much more equal.

We’ll have to go until the end of the season, and that’s what we are seeing. So, all the matches are important, starting with the next one against TS Galaxy.”

Speaking at the Sundowns–Pirates pre-match conference at Chloorkop, Cardoso said he believes that the standard of local football is improving, which is why Bafana Bafana’s rise has been propelled by locally based players.

That’s why he reiterated that as the standard of the league and teams’ signings improve, it will bring more balance to competitions across the board.

“It goes along with the question that I received about South African football; teams are raising the level,” Cardoso said. “When the level goes up, it’s clear that there’ll be more equality.

“It’s clear that we didn’t start in our best way due to certain things. We have to cope with that. We knew that our conditions would be difficult. But only now are we starting to grow the team to the level that we want to be.”

Sundowns haven’t been at their best since the start due to the aforementioned lack of preparation and recent injuries to Themba Zwane, Kutlwano Letlhaku, Lebo Mothiba, Thapelo Morena, Malibongwe Khoza, and Mothobi Mvala.

That’s why Cardoso believes that after lacking firepower against Pirates — resulting in both teams playing a tactical game — the performance and result didn’t define the standard of local football, especially considering the strides made by the national team.

“I think myself and the coach of Pirates have the same thought,” Ouaddou said. “But I think he has to have deeper thoughts because I thought that Sundowns played better than Pirates today.

“Anyway, we will learn from these kinds of matches because they expose the difficulties that teams have. I don’t want to go into detail because I never speak about my players in public. I want to keep that to myself.

“But it’s obvious that we still need more firepower. We didn’t have the capacity today. When you have so many attacking players out and you look at your bench and say ‘oops’, we knew it was important to continue with the players on the field and try to score first.

“It usually happens that we win 96% of the games when we score first. But that didn’t happen today. Pirates scored a fantastic goal from our mistake.”