Orlando Pirates coach Eric Tinkler admitted Kaizer Chiefs were the dominant team after their Telkom Knockout semi-final defeat.
Neither side could break the deadlock after 120 minutes of football, and the Bucs coach believes his side were second best and again plagued by stage-fright when it comes to converting chances.
“I think they [Chiefs] started better than us, definitely first half they showed a lot more aggression than us in terms of wanting to win the ball. They showed that aggression that we lacked today, we needed to match them for that but we didn’t,” Tinkler said.
“But I thought in the first half both teams had opportunities to take the lead. Second half we got a little bit better, I thought first 20 minutes we got ourselves back into the game, we had a couple of good chances to take the lead and then we fell flat agin after that.
“They started to dominate the last 20 minutes of the second half, we struggled to link up play today, they were much better when you look at possession, they dominated possession, but we managed to catch them a few times on the break and possibly should have scored one or two.
“But it’s the same old story, a goalkeeper gets the man of the match against us, but that’s part of the game. We do it [practise one-on-ones] in training and they finish it but it’s completely different in front of 80 000 spectators so that’s the disappointing part.
“It’s been like two games in a row now we’ve found ourselves in that situation, one-on-one with the goalkeeper and we can’t put it in the back of the net.
“But I can’t fault the boys for effort, they worked hard, they tried hard, you could see a little bit of fatigue, particularly in the last 15-20 minutes of the second half and possibly that is due to the fact that we only played just three days ago and I think Chiefs had one extra day’s rest, but that’s not trying to use that as an excuse.”
Tinkler also explained why Thabo Rakhale didn’t take a penalty in the shootout, as Erick Mathoho was injured and unable to take one for Chiefs.
“Jomo didn’t want to take one, he was last on the list, and we were told that the last person on the list should come off because they [Chiefs] only had 10 players, and it happened to be him [Rakhale],” he concluded.
Rakhale said after the game that the coach chose to remove him and that he wanted to take a penalty.