Gamesmanship in Cape Town

An old football trick came to Cape Town City’s rescue in their Nedbank Cup win over Highlands Park on Friday. We saw Owen da Gama afterwards complaining about the wet pitch.

It is an old trick, Gordon Igesund used to employ it I think. You go out for a warm up and the pitch is dry and you say “oh, I can play with six studs” and then you come out on the pitch and it is wet. Some Cape Town experience came to their rescue, but I also think the size of City’s pitch worked in their favour.

Highlands Park are a hard-running side and deploy man-to-man marking, but that creates a lot of space and City have the quality to use that space. That is why Kermit Erasmus was Man of the Match. We know how intelligent he can be standing next to a defender and moving into that space. With the type of football City play at home, they are difficult to beat.

City are not as potent away as at home though, but if you want to win anything you need to make the best use of home advantage, and then steal as many points as possible on the road, as they did recently at Kaizer Chiefs.

After the game when Da Gama mentioned the wet pitch, he said there was more water on it than in the whole of Cape Town! It got to him and the players, it was possibly a master-stroke, though the game might have been different if Peter Shalulile’s goal had stood. We don’t know if it should have without VAR.

I experienced a wet pitch against Igesund quite a few times. Kaizer Chiefs had ball-players, and when the pitch was wet it was not the best for ball players like Jabu Pule and company. You don’t have a good feel of the ball when you have six studs on.

The Highlands players didn’t look assured, it was like they needed an extra touch to get the ball under control. The ball skids and the speed of the game becomes different. Let’s say someone passes the ball to you, it comes at you quicker, when you have prepared differently. Igesund did it at Santos and Ajax.

Moving to Kaizer Chiefs’ win over Magic FC, I was impressed by Magic, they have got some quality players, like Thando Mngomeni and captain Tshepiso Tlhapi who got Man-of-the-Match. He gave a solid performance.

It is often the case, when you come up against Chiefs, Pirates or any top team, and you are a lower league side, you should be able to see the difference, and in the first half I struggled to see the difference between the professional team, Kaizer Chiefs and the amateur team, Magic FC.

In the second half it was different. Ernst Middendorp was obviously not happy with the performance and probably gave the guys a bit of a lashing. They came out looking like a different side but they were firing blanks in front of goal, and the longer they carried on without scoring, the more confidence Magic got. Chiefs were so wasteful.

At the end of the day fitness came into play. Magic’s players were tired and when that happens you are late in the tackle, that is how they conceded the first goal – via a penalty, and once that went in the floodgates opened and Chiefs’ superiority told.

Khama Billiat came off the bench and we know his quality, it was never in question. Maybe he needed a bit of a break, I am sure the technical team is managing his workload and keeping him fresh and up to speed.