Miguel Cardoso elaborates on omitting strikers as Sundowns book CL final

Cardoso was referring to the omission of strikers Peter Shalulile, Iqraam Rayners and Arthur Sales in the starting line-up at the Cairo International Stadium.

Sundowns beat their Egyptian counterparts via the away goal rule after Yasser Ibrahim put the ball in his own net to cancel out the opener by Taher Mohamed at the packed venue on Friday night.

Cardoso admits his tactical tweaks could have backfired.

“This is obviously a very interesting question and it could be the other way, if things don’t work because as I told you when we speak in press conferences in South Africa sometimes coaches are judged by the result and not the strategy or by how we approach the game because sometimes a detail can change a lot of what happens inside the pitch,” Cardoso said.

“Today on our side it could have been another way but what we wanted to create was obviously mobility in the front, we wanted to have a lot of mobility to deal with spaces. We knew there would be a moment where the team Al Ahly would have to expose a little bit more, a team like Al Ahly with 0-0 cannot play a game to draw they need some moment to try to go for goals because they know with a goal from us they are out.

“So, we knew that would happen so bringing in the pitch speed and aggression on the back and not references for those centre backs that are so strong on the contact because all the centre backs at Al Ahly they are so strong on the contact but playing on the spaces we would for sure have a better result.

“Naturally with the time passing by and the need to go for results we needed to put more aggression on that line and that’s when Peter and Iqraam can bring something but as soon as I put them on the pitch I knew that they were not being fielded in the right way.

“They were lacking some creativity that could provide them the quality so that they could be served in the last part of the pitch.”

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Ahly struggled to cope with Cardoso’s approach for most of the second half, and the Portuguese mentor adds that the introduction of Sales opened up the game even more in the dying minutes.

“Introduced Attia [Marwan] to create with Taher [Mohamed] and Attia in the back of Peter and Iqraam to play aggressive in the front. We knew that we were gonna have a lot of chances but I think in the first half we had two wonderful chances that could have [been] scored,” the coach explained.

“We had them from Lucas [Ribeiro] with also two in the second half and a moment we could do it, I’m really happy that the boys had this moment of such happiness for the club, for the boys, for myself of course, wonderful.”