CAFCL: Sundowns with good chance to beat giants Al Ahly in semis – Cardoso

Photo Credit - Mamelodi Sundowns Media.

After securing the semi-final spot in the CAF Champions League following the 0-0 (1-0 on aggregate) against Esperance Sportive de Tunis on Tuesday, South African champions Mamelodi Sundowns will now face defending champions Al Ahly in the last four.

Having won the first leg 1-0 in South African, the Brazilian held on to snatch a draw in the return leg at Stade Olympique Hammadi Agrebi on Tuesday. However, they will now have to navigate against the African champions from Egypt, who reached the stage following a 2-0 aggregate win against Sudanese outfit Al Hilal.

“We know that Al Ahly has won many Champions League trophies in the last seven or eight years. Last year, unfortunately, I lost a final against them, but I think it is possible to beat them,” Cardoso told the media as quoted by Sowetan.

“We need to play complete and strong games, playing on the details for sure. It is not that far away, we still have the Nedbank Cup game [against Kaizer Chiefs on Sunday in the semifinal] to play and that should be our focus now. We will then think about the Al Ahly game after.”

On what he did to eliminate Esperance, Cardoso said: “It helped me to prepare emotionally for the players. I said before that we need to keep the emotions in the right direction. The players focused on what they had to do and followed everything, I saw a positive attitude. I think the players enjoyed playing against a strong team.

It was not an easy match, but I also didn't expect it to be easy. We knew what level of a game we had to play against the team we were playing. We should remember that this team played the final of the Champions League, but we knew that we had the capacity and quality if we played the right way to beat them.

The challenge we put to the players was how can we be stronger to beat Esperance and I think tactically we approached the game in the right way, so we can control the offensive capacity and look at the possibility of scoring the goal.”

Sundowns will host the first leg against Al Ahly on 18 April with the return leg set for 25 April.