Facing the cream of the crop is motivating

Lately, teams always seem to rise to the occasion whenever they play the socalled big teams – and in this am referring to SuperSport United beating Orlando Pirates in the MNT8, although it was via a penalty shoot-out, but it was a win nonetheless.

SuperSport had played two games before the quarterfinals and I don’t think they were convincing in the way one would expect them to play.

But once they went up against Pirates, you could see all the players were extra motivated and they were running confidently, and with purpose, which made it very difficult for Pirates and I am afraid this might happen for the rest of the season because all the clubs are motivated by the fact that they will be playing against the Buccaneers.

The changes and the developments that have happened at the club – especially the good ones – has got players and coaches from teams keenly observing things in Orlando. That brings about the motivation from the other teams to always up their game.

It will now be a matter of Pirates being aware of it and working more to counter it because they have raised expectations.

This is evident in the number of supporters who attend their games, it is always a huge number of fans who attend matches, compared to what we used to see in the past when the club was struggling.

I wouldn’t have expected the Sea Robbers to bow out of the competition so early, and that indicated to me the margin has narrowed between the clubs playing in the Absa Premiership.

There was more joy for Pirates’ arch-rivals Kaizer Chiefs who had a better weekend as opposed to Pirates as they won their quarterfinal in convincing fashion against Free State Stars.

It is sad though that they have lost Siphelele Ntshangase and Joseph Molangoane through injuries and it will be a big blow to lose these two players – especially Ntshangase.

One could see he was working towards regaining his form of old.

He was adapting well in the team and we were starting to see his positive influence in his game, especially going forward.

He played a big role in releasing the likes of Khama Billiat and Leonardo Castro with his passes and that led to goalscoring opportunities which have been lacking in Chiefs’ game for a while.

Solinas has brought about a good change at the club because now we can see the players line themselves up in a more structured manner.

Losing players like Ntshangase and Molangoane will be a big blow to what Solinas is trying to achieve tactically because these two are a key part of his squad.

I also think Chiefs could do with a few more creative players in their squad so that in the event of players like Khama Billiat getting

injured, they can call on other players to share the load and carry the team through.

They don’t necessarily have to go into the transfer market. I believe they should tap into their development structures because they do have quality youngsters who they can give those opportunities to.

As a team, you can’t rely on your starting line-up only, you need to have a quality bench too, especially now that they will be competing in the Caf Confederation Cup in December,

I strongly feel they should have players from their development ranks to help carry the load in the eventuality of injuries, players going off form and suspensions.

Also, they do need to go into the market and recruit one or two established players because a big club like Amakhosi need to have depth in their squad.