Siyabulela Gwambi Pleased With His Team’s Fighting Spirit!

Siyabulela Gwambi Pleased With His Team’s Fighting Spirit! Chippa United lost 2-1 to Mamelodi Sundowns in the DSTV Premiership yesterday.

The visitors took the lead through a Themba Zwane penalty. Augustine Kwem equalised for the Chilli Boys early in the second half.

Star striker Peter Shalulile secured all three points for the title favourites in the last quarter of the game.

“I think we executed our plan very well, we knew that they were going to look at wide spaces, overloading on one side and in some instances they will look at pushing their wing-backs forward,” Gwambi told SuperSport TV.

“So our approach was to tell our wingers not to go forward, wait for them to build up and then we start committing. I think we executed the plan well we’re just unfortunate to concede a penalty.

“Now it immediately put us under pressure but overall we had a much improved second-half, this is the time where we have to motivate more, tell the guys to always believe. So we had a much improved second half that we can build on from here,” he said.

“We were leaving too much space and gaps for them to play, hence I said in pre-match talk that there is individual responsibility that we tasked the players to do, so we had to revive and remind them.

“This is what we discussed and this is what we planned, we must not be dragged by any movement that is made by the Sundowns players’, now you will find that Sundowns had players who were moving and we were not following the runners.

“So we managed to sort that out at half-time to say when one player goes, we’re not short [because] at times we were marking one player and we’re three. And we said ‘follow the runner’ and that’s when we started to play because they were also panicking.

“That’s how they lost a lot of ball possession because they couldn’t find the player who was initiating, especially Zwane and [Lebogang] Maboe, they couldn’t see them in some instances and so that was the talk. They also had the opportunity to motivate one another, give ideas so this what we saw in the second-half.”

Chippa United play in the semi-finals of the Nedbank Cup next.

“We’re playing against Pretoria Callies, they had the luxury of watching our games, we’re not. So we have another task to go for the Nedbank Cup semi-final which is not going to be easy,” he said.

“We’re not going to say we’re playing against GladAfrica team, we’re playing a Nedbank Cup semi-final, so our approach shouldn’t be different to what you see, maybe there could be a change of personnel there and there, to ensure that we convert as many chances as possible,” he went on.

Siyabulela Gwambi Pleased With His Team’s Fighting Spirit!