Champions League quarter-final ticket bittersweet for Sundowns coach

The Portuguese mentor celebrated their passage to the quarter-finals of the continental competition with a wry smile on Sunday night after AS FAR equalised at the death to jump to the summit.

Although Downs maintained their record making it to the last eight in every addition since 2018, dropping points at Loftus made for a somber mood.

Cardoso reiterated afterward the 1-1 stalemate that he’d always held the view they were in a difficult group.

"We made a mistake I told you here in the press conference before the match yesterday that the details will be very important. We knew that usually from situations where players could progress and into the box, they will make cut back pass so we were prepared but unfortunately, we did not control these players and we suffered because of that,” Cardoso said.

“But I think it's very important that we don't take for granted, the fact that we went to the group stage and not make off it a bad moment, no it's a very, very positive moment because when we arrived in the club, everybody was thinking what would happen to us because the situation was not very comfortable.

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We won the first game to Raja and it brought us back into the competition. I'm happy, the players are happy, obviously it's normal that the coach that is ambitious suffers a goal 20 minutes from finishing the game in a moment where we had all control of the game and losses first position on the table obviously gets a little bit disappointed.

“But that comes from our ambition from the fact that we know which club we represent, from the fact that we're prepared to win the game and from the fact that we could have finished the game before so we didn't and we suffered because Champions League is like that."

Sundowns players walked off the pitch deflated, and Cardoso believes it’s the kind of reaction that will only make them better ahead of an even tougher fixture in the next round.

"That emotion is natural to come on us, on myself but we should not confuse that emotion with the sensation that we did a bad job, that's completely the opposite. So, the fact that you are not happy because you suffered a goal makes you feel like it's a defeat but it's not a defeat,” the coach added.

“There were two results on the table, I remember yesterday you asked me a question 'What about if you lose the game, what will happen?'. We didn't lose, we got our result.

“Everybody asked us to make a result that will make us go through the group stages and now we understand that the teams are all equal in the next round, very equal and because of that being first or second eventually is not a big difference."