Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture Gayton McKenzie has reprimanded Mamelodi Sundowns’ CAF Champions League-winning coach Miguel Cardoso and will submit a written complaint to the club about the Portuguese tactician’s behaviour.
Cardoso, who masterminded Sundowns’ second CAF Champions League triumph on Sunday in Rabat, Morocco, criticised the local Betway Premiership in his post-final comments.
The 53-year-old has been vocal all season about the scheduling of Sundowns’ domestic fixtures alongside their continental commitments, which ultimately caught up with the Pretoria side as they surrendered the Betway Premiership title for the first time in nine seasons.
Even in his moment of triumph in North Africa, Cardoso once again pinpointed the challenges Sundowns faced, and that locally things need to change if another South African team is to claim the grandest prize in African football again.
“It is important that if South Africa is to have one team to win again soon, some dynamics have to change, to provide the right conditions,” said Cardoso.
“Today (Sunday) we had three potential Bafana Bafana players who could not play – Thapelo Morena, Aubrey Modiba and Bathusi Aubaas.”
“The last month exposed something not normal. They could have been very useful to us. It is time the people in charge of South African football think about what they want in terms of the development of football in the country.”
McKenzie has not taken kindly to Cardoso’s comments and hit back on X (formerly Twitter) to remind the Sundowns coach he is a guest in someone else’s house and should behave appropriately.
“We are happy for @Masandawana but we cannot continuously be told by this coach about how [badly] our league is run,” McKenzie posted.
“We, like everyone else, got challenges but we have the [best-run] league in Africa. Stop talking down on South Africa. We will write to @Masandawana to complain today.”
He went further by stating that Cardoso’s comments are detrimental to the Betway Premiership brand.
“Listening to [Cardoso] the coach of @Masandawana you will think everything is wrong with our league, he says [these] things without forwarding any proof,” McKenzie added.
“We [are] working very hard to bring in sponsors and this type of nonsense spewed sets us back tremendously.”
McKenzie has been actively pushing for the introduction of VAR in the Betway Premiership and has sourced funds to help cover the approximately R80 million cost.
