Benni: A lot of hard work ahead for City
BENNI MCCARTHY declared himself happy with Cape Town City’s 2-0 win over SuperSport United on the opening day of the 2018-19 PSL season, but the former Bafana Bafana striker cautioned that there was still a long way to go, and a lot of hard work ahead for his team.
City comfortably dispatched of the Pretoria side at Cape Town Stadium on Saturday with a screaming volley from impressive Roland Putsche and a wellworked goal from Craig Martin. But, despite head coach McCarthy’s satisfaction at the overall performance of his team, he was already thinking ahead. City have two tricky fixtures to negotiate this week – first up a league game against Baroka FC in Polokwane on Wednesday and then, in the first round of the MTN8, a trip toKwaZulu-Natal to face Maritzburg United on Sunday.
“Looking at the win over SuperSport, I thought we started a bit slowly,” said McCarthy. “We wanted to make our intentions known from the get-go. But afterwards we started growing; we were comfortable on the ball and, despite SuperSport’s high-intensity press, we were still good in possession. The only problem, in the first half, was that we were playing nice football, but not penetrating. And that was the message that went out to the players at halftime: we needed to get in behind them, and use (Riyaad) Norodien and (Surprise) Ralani to turn their defenders. This is what we got in the second half, Ralani got in behind and then Roland Putsche scored with a fantastic strike. It’s something we are always asking of Putsche and Teko Modise at training, that they are in position for the second ball to have opportunities like that.
“However, I thought that, when we were 2-0 up, we invited SuperSport back into the game. We were guilty of making sloppy passes and that is something I have to revisit; I have to impress on the team not to lose focus and to see