Mamelodi Sundowns mentor Miguel Cardoso has hinted at a smaller squad for the Betway Premiership champions ahead of next the season.

The Brazilians boosted a squad of 40 players last season, as per Transfermarkt, including five goalkeepers.

Three players have already been let go: Lucas Suarez, Rivaldo Coetzee, and Sipho Mbule, who was on loan at Sekhukhune United and has since found a new home at Orlando Pirates.

The future of Argentinian Matias Esquivel is in serious doubt, and unconfirmed reports suggest prolific striker Peter Shalulile could be on his way out too.

Thapelo Maseko is also expected to join an unnamed Cypriot team on loan, though there are also other claims that he could be headed back to SuperSport United.

It would appear that there could be more exits than arrivals at Chloorkop, reading between the lines of what Cardoso said.

“We have a wonderful group of players and maybe even too many players, but we play in a very tough competition, in the South African context, with so many games with short intervals between matches,” said Cardoso after their FIFA Club World Cup exit.

“We want to reduce the number of players in the team, make a smaller team, a smaller group, but also bring in more quality, so reduce but bring more quality—so that we have… We already have more than one player with high quality in each position, more than two.

“But we need to have two who can replace each other 100%; that is what we need to do—in some positions we need two-and-a-half players, like fullbacks; we need to have two on each side, plus one; that’s why I say two-and-a-half—like five (players),” he added.

“We know we play a lot, every three or four days; it increases the number of injuries we may have, so we need to be careful. We won’t change a lot, but there’s some obvious… let’s see what happens with our players.”