Royal AM head coach John Maduka says Kaizer Chiefs never looked like scoring until Thabo Matlaba's unfortunate goal.
The KwaZulu-Natal side were narrowly beaten 2-1 by Chiefs in the quarter-finals after an own goal by Matlaba nine minutes before the half-time break cancelled out an opener by Lesego Manganyi.
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Maduka says he feels they managed the game well after scoring but lost control after they conceded an own goal.
"Yoh, if it's not your day it's not your day. I think the game we started well, we managed to score a goal from a set-piece, after that we contained them," Maduka said on SuperSport TV.
"They never looked like they would score until we made that mistake. So in other ways we made things difficult for ourselves, games like these you have to concentrate throughout the match.
"You make one mistake you get punished but so proud of the boys, never gave up, we scored an own goal, the other goal is a penalty.
Maduka carried on and suggested that his players bowed down to the pressure of playing long balls, which is not their game and was not happy with that.
"But we continued fighting, although we strongly believe that we fought but we did not play also the way we normally play," added.
"We tend to play like the opposition whenever they kick the ball forward and that's not our game. We're supposed to keep the ball, try to create those chances going forward but I think we did not do that much.
"I think the nature of the cup games are like that, you don't want to make mistakes and that's when we made mistakes unfortunately."
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