Stellenbosch FC head coach Steve Barker has revealed what he told his players at half-time of their seven-goal thriller with Lamontville Golden Arrows.
Stellenbosch had one training session before facing Arrows on Wednesday evening after returning from Equatorial Guinea for their CAF Confederation Cup first-leg. Despite lack of rest, Stellies showed character beating high flying Arrows by 4-3 in an entertaining game for the supporters at Athlone Stadium.
Before this massive three points, Stellies were sitting in 15th place in the Betway Premiership, Barker emphasized how important was is it to win the match so that they can move away from the relegation zone.
“Yeah. Seven-goal thriller, I think for the fans it was nice, but as a coach, it’s not easy, but I thought both teams played to win the game,” Barker told the media.
“Before we played this game, the message to the players that sometimes, all the time, teams want to win football games, but we needed to win tonight.
“So there’s a difference between wanting to and needing to, and tonight was much needed. We had to find a way to get the result. So after struggling to score goals, to get four was really good for us as a team.
“Obviously, one or two other goals, maybe we could have done better, but they also scored some real good quality goals. I just thought that both teams had their moments in terms of control.
“We started the game really well. I thought the first 20, 25 minutes we controlled the tempo, we controlled the ball. We were on the front foot creating. So it was a bit disappointing to concede as late as we did and go to the break at 1-1 after I felt being a better team in the first half.
“Second half, the message was, obviously, don’t let the goal they scored get your shoulders down. We’ve played well enough in first half, if we can replicate that second half, then we can win the game.
“Second half became quite a match of sort of transition moments for both teams obviously pushing forward to get a goal, and I thought it became an open game. And a lot of sort of defensive shape and errors was lost, which led to creating space and amount of goals that were scored.
“But yeah, just really relieved with the result. And I said earlier, before the match, that I felt there is an upward curve with a team on a couple of games now unbeaten in cup, CAF and league, it was now finding a way to score goals to continue that upward curve.
“So hopefully we can build on this foundation of scoring the goals, but obviously also just making sure that we’re a bit tighter at the back.”
