Senior coach confident Brazilians will bounce back after first defeat in normal time of 2026-27

Mamelodi Sundowns senior coach Steve Komphela says they will have to find a way to bounce back after their disappointing 3-1 defeat to USM Alger in the Caf Super Cup final at Loftus Versfeld on Sunday.

The defeat came just a few weeks after their shock exit in the Champions League preliminaries. The loss was also Sundowns’ first this season across all competitions and Komphela said they will need to show character in the coming weeks.

“This is how your character gets built. And I don’t think we are the first ones to go through this, and we are not going to be the last ones,” Komphela told the media during the mix zone after the match.

“Sundowns has been in situations where we needed to dust ourselves and show character. We have a great dressing room with experienced players, and a technical team that’s strong enough and that has a way to focus on what has to be looked at. As they always say, this is breakfast for champions.”

Komphela also has revealed the words of encouragement he received from a USM Alger player after their defeat and that this will also motivate them.

“It’s funny because as soon as the match came to an end, one of the players from USM Alger came through and said something very strange. He said, ‘You guys are a big team, you will recover.’ For me, that was profound. Sometimes in life, we need reminders about who we are and this is the one,” he said.

“We wanted to win it, unfortunately, it couldn’t fall our way. You don’t want to start throwing forward and get paralysed by the fact that you start looking at things that are coming.

It is not normal that we lose a player during warm-up, where we should be preparing them to start

—  Miguel Cardoso

“But where we are, we are hurting and also for our supporters. And the fact that you are the Champions League winners, when you play folks who are also winners, but in the Confederation [Cup], logic or common sense or expectation would be Champions League winners should win and sometimes football is not like that. We regret the result, we wanted it different. Unfortunately, it did not come our way.”

Meanwhile, Sundowns coach Miguel Cardoso pointed to a chaotic start, including losing key player Nuno Santos during the warm-up and having to substitute striker Bryan Leon just 15 minutes into the game.

“Of course, we can only speak about a very unfortunate match played in tricky circumstances. It is not normal that we lose a player during warm-up, where we should be preparing them to start,” Cardoso told the media during the post-match press conference.

“I think we also made mistakes that at this level are penalised by goals.”