Life is full of these strange contradictions — as was evident at a jam-packed Olympia Park in Rustenburg on Sunday afternoon when Moroka Swallows outplayed a lacklustre Kaizer Chiefs for the opening 53 minutes of their second-leg MTN 8 semifinal, but with the prospect of a sensational about-turn victory, they lost their impetus when confronted by 10 men.
Chiefs, with a 2-0 lead from the first-leg, were badly shaken when Swallows’s Ryan Botha reduced the deficit in the 48th minute with a scorching drive and then Venezualen striker Jose Torrealba was sent off a mere five minutes later.
Faced by 10 men, the Birds were unable to maintain the momentum that had enabled them to come within a whisker of impending victory — and Swallows coach Julio Cesar Leal lamented over the paradox that had sent his team sliding to a 2-1 aggregate defeat.
”When we were two goals down and with our backs to the wall, the team played for the moment, concentrated on the task at hand and had Chiefs on the back foot for most of the opening half.
”Then when victory suddenly became a reality after the sending off of Torrealba, my players became too nervous and cautious and lost their momentum — instead of showing a killer instinct and driving home their numerical advantage.”
Leal, however, said Swallows had emerged from the game with much encouragement for the impending launch of the Premier League, despite failing to reach the R8-million winner-take-all final against Mamelodi Sundowns.
”We brought Chiefs back to earth,” added the Swallows coach, ”and showed we could be a match for them and more”.
And it could have been even worse for the Amakhosi had a controversial off-side decision not nullified Sandile Ndlovu’s goal.
Ndlovu appeared fractionally in front of the Chiefs’ defence when Lefa Tsutsulupa delivered a telling cross from the right flank, but it did not look as though he was in front of the ball when the pass was made — and this would have meant he was on-side. – Sapa