We defended like lions
On how the CAF Confederation Cup experience has been so far
The CAF Confederation Cup experience has been good so far, especially the group stage. If it was Orlando Pirates or Cape Town City, everybody would be jumping up and down, singing their praises, but because it’s little Marumo Gallants… Anyway, the past two results (against Al Akhdar and Saint Eloi Lupopo) have been received very well by the club chairman (Abram Sello) and the supporting staff. When the chairman approached me to come to Gallants – of course I would not be disrespectful to Dan “Dance” (Malesela) at all – I said to the chairman I’m not going to go behind his back and once he has made his decision, he can call me. He did make that call and it didn’t take much thinking to say yes, especially with the schedule that they have – it’s a disaster. Basically, we have 16 ‘cup finals’; we’ve already played four and are still involved in two cup competitions. One thing I spoke to the chairman about was, “Let me manage the team and the control as far as travels, recovery and team selection is concerned so that we get it right.” Over the next two weeks, we have USM Alger away from home, which is going to be a fourday trip – two days of traveling and two days of staying in Algeria. After we arrive back in Johannesburg, we have Mamelodi Sundowns in the Last 16 of the Nedbank Cup and three days later we have TS Galaxy in the league. Three days after that, we have USM Alger at home in the Confederation Cup. We have to do things right on and off the pitch, and I want to be in control of that. I’ve learned from my experience of being in this cup competition twice before with Gor Mahia when we travelled to places like Rwanda, Algiers, Tunisia, Morocco and played in difficult circumstances. It’s given me an experience, so let’s see how things work and how we can make things better for Marumo Gallants. That was important – we have to manage the squad, not just tactically but physically as well because there’s a lot of fixtures and travelling coming up. We are based in Polokwane but play our home matches in Rustenburg. It’s how we deal with travel, recovery and the training and so far, so good.
On the weekend’s victory over Saint Eloi Lupopo
The game against Saint Eloi Lupopo this past weekend, we knew that it was going to be tough because we were traveling away. The field was heavy from the rain, but we approached the game to not concede a goal. We played some really good football, exciting football. We created chances and worked on set-pieces the day before. We had the right attitude and the right atmosphere, we had the right temperament to play the game and keep attacking, and we won 2-1. But the disappointing thing is that in this game and the one against Akhdar, we didn’t score more goals. Our decision-making in good situations was not the best, especially in the last 15 minutes where we could have killed the game off. They made it difficult and when they got the freekick, my wall could have done better by jumping. But we defended like lions in the last eight minutes, plus five minutes injury time to make sure that we didn’t throw the game away because it would have been a travesty if we had lost that game.
Now we have to focus on the next match because we have a very tough month of March where we only play two PSL games, one Nedbank Cup match and three CAF Confederation Cup games.
On having coached in this competition before
The first time I coached in the CAF Confederation Cup, I was with Gor Mahia and we went to play against AS Tunis (in Tunisia). They knocked us out in the first round and went on to win the Confederation Cup that year. The following season, we reached the group stage, but unfortunately due to logistics… when we played against a team from Rwanda, all we needed was a point but ended up losing the game 1-0, which was really sad. When I joined Marumo, I asked the captain, “Is this team good enough to stay in the PSL and do well in the Confederation Cup?” His answer was, “100 percent, coach.” That gave me an idea of the squad we have, even though I’ve been watching them regularly, especially when they came to Durban – I would go and watch them. To get four wins on the trot, it’s a good sign that things are changing and what I’ve noticed is that every player is working hard because now they have opportunities, while the previous coach wouldn’t pick certain players. They felt alienated, they felt left out and felt not wanted. When I joined and trained 32 to 34 players… everyone has got an opportunity. It’s who wants the jersey that will play and when you do play, are you going to keep the jersey? But not just for CAF Confederation Cup, for any competition. Anyone who wants to be in the starting XI, wanting to be on the bench, they have to perform every day at training and even more importantly, perform in the game.
On how they plan to finish the season
We will go with the same mentality in the remaining matches and try to keep the same team that is winning games as much as we can. Obviously, against USM Alger there will be lots of changes because we have to manage the travel and the recovery of the players. We have two days preparations, one of those days is traveling before the Sundowns game. We have to manage the physicality and mentality the best way we can. We are going to the Confederation Cup with an attitude of ‘let us be one of the best teams in Africa and let’s fly the flag of South African football and give a good account of ourselves’. We can only get better and improve each game that we play because the attitude is back, the atmosphere is back, the laughter is back and the enjoyment of playing and training is back in the camp.