Miguel Cardoso: Whatever happened should not have happened

The Buccaneers gained advantage within moments of the much-talked about Betway Premiership clash at FNB Stadium kicking off, as attacker Relebohile Mofokeng scored twice in the space of just two minutes. 

Sundowns struggled to settle and find their feet, but eventually pulled one back through defender Khuliso Mudau shortly after the hour mark, leaving Cardoso baffled as to how they ended up on the losing end.

"It's clear that the first – I don't know – three or four minutes, when we suffered the two goals, a very bad beginning of the game brings strong consequences on the game, obviously," said Cardoso.

"These kinds of matches, it's very important to start them well, start them with the right conviction, the right positioning, and obviously that I didn't see what happened [during] the goals.

"But whatever happened should not have happened, it's clear. I think that after that, until around the 25th or 30th minute, we had an interesting reaction.

"We tried to play our game and tried to achieve a goal, we know a 2-0 [score] is always a very tricky result, but we also knew that a 3-0 would also be a very bad result for us, [in relation to] the first result at Loftus.

"So it was quite a difficult match in terms of managing after we conceded the second goal, because we also knew that too much risk could expose us more, and from that we could even suffer more goals.

"We had some [Pirates] transitions and counter-attacks that we had difficulty dealing with, but I think we also had the capacity to create [opportunities] until around the 30th minute, as I said."

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