Jomo Cosmos may be wallowing in the despair of PSL relegation — but it was Wits University coach Roger de Sa who looked as though he was attending a funeral service as his team slumped to a first-round 2-0 Telkom Cup defeat at the Bidvest Stadium on Saturday night.
A stunning 27th minute goal from the edge of the penalty area from Gerald Modabi effectively gave Cosmos their uplifting success into the tournament’s quarterfinals.
Wits dominated play territorially for the opening 25 minutes and again between Cosmos’ scoring efforts, but their finishing of a cascading number of opportunities bordered on the pathetic — and while their play became more urgent as impending defeat loomed in the final 30 minutes, their panic level negated this and they rarely looked like scoring.
Despite Cosmos finishing at the bottom of the Premier League, they have invariably proved a difficult nut to crack with a well-organised defence once they have found themselves in front.
The trouble, of course, was that Jomo Sono’s team were little more than sterile when it came to scoring goals themselves — something they belatedly corrected with two majestically created efforts of vintage opportunism against what ultimately proved a shell-shocked Wits’ combination.
De Sa had warned before the game that “a wounded” Cosmos would be motivated to make an impression and would not be easy meat. His players, however, seemingly failed to heed the advice and started off with a complacency that suggested they were in for little more than a walk in the park.
However the game was gradually transformed into a gruelling uphill battle, made more humiliating by the fact that it was enacted on Wits’ home pitch.
Cosmos were without long-serving goalkeeping stalwart Avril Phali, who was injured in a mid-week training session.
But it made little difference as Wits’ scoring efforts sailed high and wide — and the wrong options near goal were taken with regular monotony.
The result was that Cosmos owner-coach Sono was able to do a jig at the final whistle to momentarily erase the spectre of next season’s descent to a lower division — and experience again what it feels like to be a winner. – Sapa