Although they were a man down, the Citizens fought and equalised to force the game into extra-time and post-match penalties
Cape Town City coach Eric Tinkler is of the opinion his charges suffered under pressure against Mamelodi Sundowns during the MTN8 final on Saturday at Moses Mabhida Stadium.
The Citizens – who were reduced to 10 men following Idumba Fasika’s red card – lost 3-2 in the post-match penalties following a 1-1 draw at the end of extra-time.
Pressure
“I feel for the boys because it is tough to lose the way we lost. You can train all you want even though we practised solid penalties three days after training and when you put them into this situation, people melt,” Tinkler told SuperSport TV after the game.
“Unfortunately, the pressure looked too big and you could not replicate that in the training session. But congratulations to Sundowns, they are an exceptional team, difficult to break down, although I thought we defended well even though they have got so many clever players.
“They still found situations and solutions and we found it difficult to contain them. With the quality they have, you make a mistake or lose the ball in the wrong area, you get punished. That is how they took the lead, but I think the boys responded well and we needed to be a little bit patient on the ball.
“There are periods we started to panic and gave the ball away cheaply because we were growing frustrated.
“We changed the formation and we started to control the match a lot better. There were a number of situations where we could have gone on and won the match, but that changed when we got a red card.
“We tried to take it to the penalties, but even that did not work for us.”
Although Tinkler conceded his charges were unable to cope with the pressure, he felt satisfied by the performance, especially after making changes: “Their movements between the centre-backs and the fullbacks were hurting us,” said the tactician.
“[Themba] Zwane was a constant threat every time he got half-spaces and so I thought it was important to change the back three. We started to contain them with a lot of ease, we picked the balls a lot quicker and we started to find each other with ease.
“That made a lot of difference quite immediately and that gave us the opportunity to find the equaliser. The changes we made brought an immediate impact.”
Denis Onyango’s heroics – after saving five of Cape Town City’s penalties – massively helped the Tshwane giants lift the MTN8 trophy for the first time in 14 years.
Be the first to comment