In the latter, they were unceremoniously dumped out by giant killers Magesi FC, who went on to win the whole shebang.

“There are always considerations in serious appointments like changing a coach but it wasn’t the Magesi FC game that was the decider," Motsepe said in Tuesday's press conference to announce the appointment of Miguel Cardoso.

"The Magesi game was magic for most but tragic for us. It was definitely something you look back on. Someone came up to me at the end of the game and said 'this is why football is called the beautiful game', and it’s tough to look at it from that perspective when you’re on the receiving end of a Cinderella story like that.

"What I know is that the performance inspired many amateur footballers and many coaches to say that this is possible and that’s the magic of cup football.

“We started the season having given the coaching team an opportunity to lead the club in the direction they saw fit. Unfortunately, we started with a stumble and we were knocked out of the MTN8. We had another unfortunate stumble against Polokwane City and there was just series of games where we never really saw the consistency that we would have hoped.

“The club wasn't trending in the direction that we knew the club should be so the decision was made after a compounding of many factors and led us to the decision and then we had to make it fairly quick to put the coach and his team to be in the best position to see out the rest of the season.”

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Mamelodi Sundowns not concerned by new coach Miguel Cardoso's underwhelming CV

Why Sundowns fired Manqoba Mngqithi despite dominating the league: Thlopie Motsepe explains