Mamelodi Sundowns coach Miguel Cardoso was happy with his team’s overall performance in Sunday’s 1-1 draw against AS FAR but said a lack of sharpness in front of goal cost them the victory.
The Brazilians, who dominated the game at the Loftus Stadium, looked poised to take the victory and move to the top of f Group B standings, but had to settle for a point and second spot after Amine Zouhzouh equalised for FAR with seven minutes left.
“For the longest time we did not experience a week that allowed us to work and I think it is obvious that during first half we were quite compact, quite strong as a team and we controlled the whole game,” said Cardoso.
“We had a lot of chances to kill the game and make a second goal and to finish the game but then it was more difficult to manage the second half especially the last 20 minutes. So we could not keep the same level throughout the 90 minutes of the game and because of that we suffered. We made a mistake.
“Like I said in the MD-1 press conference that the details will be very important. We knew that usually on situations that players from AS FAR could progress and enter the box they wouldn’t make a cut-back pass. We were prepared but unfortunately, we could not control this player and we suffered because of that,” he added.
AS FAR assistant coach Jamil Benouahi was happy with his team character and for getting a point away in Pretoria.
“We came here with a plan. We came here with targets and these targets were: to finish top of the group and secondly, we were looking for the experience of playing away against strong and good teams like Mamelodi Sundowns and get good results. We were losing 1-0 at half-time and we came back again, and this group shows character and quality.
“We had that many times against Mamelodi Sundowns in Morocco, we had that in Kinshasa, and we had that in our league as well and we needed to show how strong we can be,” he said.
