Miguel Cardoso demands perfection as Sundowns eye title defence

The Brazilians set the mark with a hard fought 1-0 win away to Durban City on Tuesday night, maintaining top spot while Orlando Pirates continue to apply pressure in a tightening title race.

Looking ahead to the run-in, Cardoso was clear that there is no margin for error if Sundowns are to be crowned champions again. 

"Look, correct, it's absolutely correct but everything is important of course. If you want to be champions in this league that means that you have to extend that sequel for sure. We have to continue to score a lot of points because the league is very tough and that's our focus for sure when the league restarts but now we need to turn off this button and turn on Champions League mode and try to get the energy that can get us to the last part of the PSL,” Cardoso said.

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With Pirates thrashing Golden Arrows 5-0 on the same night, Cardoso stressed that it would be folly to pay too much attention to how their rivals are going about their business. 

"The sequel is that to look ahead and win games, there's not a big margin for mistakes, so that's what we have to do for sure. There's no victories if you don't play the game that you have to play but obviously you need to understand we have a lot of matches and we'll be heavily charged, so having the chance to manage the team in the right moments without going in another direction, that is getting victories is very important for us,” he added.

“So that you can fight every game with the right energy but we focus on performance, on playing well, on playing the way we had to play because if we take the game in another direction then we can be penilised  because it's not the way we are adapting to be. 

“So, we cannot dissociate the performance from the result because that's how we produce results, it's playing our style of play and be committed with the behaviours to be prominent inside the pitch."