Swallows coach Fani Madida has singled out one of their players for criticism after their 2-1 defeat at the hands of 10-man Cape Town City.
Swallows saw their one-goal advantage over City overturned despite playing the entire second half with a numerical advantage following Abbubaker Mobara’s red card.
Nathan Idumba Fasika’s netted an equaliser after the hour mark before Mpho Makola’s stunning late winner from a free-kick and Madida felt they were let down by goalkeeper Jody February.
“It’s a painful one because in the first half we had a helluva game but in the second half, they were one player down, we thought it was going to be easy,” Madida said.
“We didn’t keep that intensity and we didn’t use the wing play as much as we should have done, I was disappointed in the manner of how the goals were scored.
“The difference between the two teams was the City goalkeeper saved them, our goalkeeper today didn’t save us. If you [concede] on the second post, it means there’s something wrong because that’s a ball that you will see. It moves past you as a goalkeeper.
“So definitely you need to handle the ball, so he spilt it but we also wanted Malinga to be tied on number four [Fasika] but he didn’t do what he was supposed to do.”
Having spurned several chances in the opening twenty minutes to put the game to bed when they had ascendency over the Citizens – Madida admitted that game intelligence was lacking.
“We create chances, sometimes they score, sometimes they don’t – so today they didn’t finish those created chances,” he added.
“We must always have hope in football that the next game they will finish those chances, we just need to keep fighting and polish ourselves where we’ve had misses.
“In football, you need the intelligence of knowing what you have to do at whatever time, we were supposed to manage the game – we didn’t manage it, you manage it by keeping the ball more. So we didn’t do that and it’s minor things that matter in football.
