The former Bafana Bafana striker also explains how his players allowed the Soweto-giants to snatch a late draw on Saturday
AmaZulu coach Benni McCarthy has blamed a lack of concentration for the team’s 1-1 draw against Kaizer Chiefs in their Premier Soccer League match on Saturday.
McCarthy also attempted to play down the controversial penalty awarded to Amakhosi toward the end of the game.
Usuthu were close to taking three points from Amakhosi after they took a deserved lead in the 48th minute courtesy of Luvuyo Memela but the away team levelled matters at the stroke of full time when Keagan Dolly converted his penalty to salvage a point.
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Speaking after the game at Jonsson Kings Park Stadium in Durban, the former Bafana Bafana striker has stated Chiefs did not have the quality to trouble them.
“If we talk about the officiating and then you get called up to the DC again so it’s best I try to keep it as positive and polite and smiling, just…so the league can be happy,” McCarthy told SuperSport TV.
‘Chiefs were too defensive’
“It was a fantastic performance from the boys, I think we told ourselves we should not give the ball away because they cannot come into this game, and because they don’t have the quality to open us up, to break us through, and create clear goalscoring opportunities,” McCarthy told the media.
“From the last few games that we have seen they [Chiefs] are yet to find their feet and I knew that was a disadvantage for them and if we use mobility that we have because they clearly went a lot of defensive having a central defender Njabulo [Ngcobo] playing in midfield, so they were so defensive.
“We were forced to use the mobility of Memela and Sphesihle Maduna and Matarr Ceesayto get in behind them and feeding the attackers and it worked very well.
“You know we resorted to playing one-touch football to get behind them and then we scored a fantastic goal to go 1-0 up and then we could have gone 2-0 up but they had a couple of good saves from the goalkeeper.
“Then we got the chances, we controlled the game, we were in possession on the ball and then we started running down the clock and playing to maintain a 1-0 lead advantage because Chiefs were pushing a lot of numbers forward and then we lost concentration and they equalised.”
The draw kept AmaZulu in position eighth with seven points from six matches while Chiefs are 12th with six points from six matches.