Cape Town City head coach Eric Tinkler says the ball did not cross line for Orlando Pirates' second goal on Tuesday night.
City lost their third consecutive game in the league and lost their fourth game in a row in all competitions after goals by Zakhele Lepasa and Patrick Maswanganyi, who both scored for Pirates.
Tinkler says they knew the Buccaneers are very good offensively, judging from their previous matches where they scored a lot of goals and wanted to press them high but it did not completely work out, especially in dealing with second balls.
Read | Lepasa Maswanganyi get Pirates back on track
"They are a very good team in attack, you know. You look at the goals they have already scored this season, five goals, three goals, four goals, so we knew that offensively they are very well structured, well organized, play with a lot of speed," Tinkler said on SuperSport TV.
"And our objective was to press them nice and high and I thought we did that really well. Our contribution, defensively, second balls, that was letting us down. You know we got caught every time there was a long ball, we were not there to pick up the second balls.
"And then they started to create moments from that but important for us was when we won the ball, what we did it with it and we didn't do enough in the first-half and that's what disappointed me," he said.
Tinkler, however, went on and admitted that the goal scored by Lepasa there was nothing they could do about it.
"The (first) goal itself, you gotta give a lot of credit to Lepasa, great turn, great finish, so I can't really fault anyone there you know," he said.
"But I felt our response in the second-half much better, the changes we made much better, we came into the game a lot better, we started finding the half spaces a lot better and we had them on the back foot to be brutally honest.
"I thought in the second half we had much of the possession, we had most of the territory, the only time they were catching us was on a counter and we were chasing the game."
The former Pirates head coach carried on and disputed the goal scored by Maswanganyi, where goalkeeper Darren Keet saved his shot on the line but the goal was awarded to the Buccaneers after the assistant referee raised his flag to indicate that the ball crossed the goal-line.
"So (if) we don't take our chances, they gonna catch you on a counter but you gotta take your chances but you know, the second goal, according to me, not a goal," he said.
"But again we allow this to happen week in and week out with no repercussions, what are we gonna do? March on to the next game, can't fault the boys, second-half we showed up and I was very happy with what I saw in the second half," he added.
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