Miguel Cardoso reminds critics of long journey to success

By Mazola Molefe
19th May 2025

Mamelodi Sundowns coach Miguel Cardoso was quick to remind his detractors he had paid his dues in his career after the Tshwane giants were crowned Betway Premiership champions.

The Portuguese mentor took over at Chloorkop in December – six matches into the league campaign – following Manqoba Mngqithi's sacking.

READ: Sundowns sign off title-winning campaign with Magesi scalp

Despite his impressive CV, as well as the fact that Cardoso had won the Tunisian Premier League with Esperance just a few months earlier, some doubted whether he could take Sundowns to new heights, but the coach says he paid little attention to skeptics.

"With all due respect to the media, fans, and people, I don't need external validation. I don't live for that, I live for other things, so people having doubts about me was never a problem for me," said Cardoso.

"So it's for you to understand how people were mistaken regarding many things, and at least they were not really attentive to myself or where I came from.

"Today I opened my instagram, and it made 16 years since I played in the Europa League final as a seasoned coach – SC Braga vs FC Porto in Dublin, it was 16 years ago.

"That's a long, long, long way until Miguel Cardoso arrived at Sundowns, and that is the attention that people didn't pay, people just went back and said, 'How many trophies has he won?'

"And I said on the first day, the trophies a coach wins have to do with where he was, because not every coach – and there are for sure many coaches much better than me, who will never win a trophy because they didn't have a chance to be in the context where winning was possible, but they won many other things.

"If you go back and see how many games and the teams we beat to reach the final – Liverpool, Dynamo Kiev, Sevilla, Celtic, Benfica, Lech Poznan, Arsenal just on the way to the final, where we lost 1-0 against Porto, so I don't have that trophy in my career.

"But look at the amount of games we won until we lost the final, so on that day I was not happy, but I was not a loser – I was a winner, and still looking back after 16 years, I feel proud, and this is something we need to understand."

READ: Cardoso points out areas PSL need to improve