Cape Town City head coach Eric Tinkler is looking for a positive start to the Betway Premiership but knows it will be a tricky first game on the road against Royal AM.
City will face Royal AM at Harry Gwala Stadium on Saturday afternoon, in what will be the first official game of the 2024/25 league campaign.
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Tinkler is feeling confident ahead of the game and has stressed the importance of kicking off on the front foot, especially if his team, who finished fifth last season, are going to be competitive this campaign.
“You’ve got to be able to compete, be it at home or be it away, that’s how the fixtures have come out,” Tinkler told iDiski Times.
“And yes, like you said, we’ve had to wait quite a while for the league to start. It started, obviously, now only in September, and normally we started in the first week of August.
“But I think the guys are ready. They understand the importance of starting on the front foot.
“Not easy. No game in the PSL is easy. All the games are very, very difficult, but if you really want to compete at the highest level, you’ve got to be able to go to Royal AM and achieve a positive result.”
Tinkler said that Royal AM’s FIFA registration ban, which means they can’t sign new players, could actually make them more dangerous.
“I think it actually makes them more dangerous to be brutally honest, because there’s more continuity,” Tinkler explained.
“If anything, those players have been there now for what is it, two, three seasons already, and in football, we talk about repetition, repetition, and they can only get better.
“So we’re going to have to be at our best on the day. We’re going to make sure that we go there. Names on paper mean nothing, what’s important is how you perform, how you deliver your actions, I think these are the key factors for us.
“We know what our strengths are. We know what our weaknesses are. Now we gotta go out there and make sure that we play to our strengths and ensure we put on a good performance in order to achieve our objectives for the season.
“We’re an ambitious club. We want to compete always at the highest level, and my expectation from the players is to go out there, play without fear and represent Cape Town City with pride.”
Story by Rob Delport (@FMSouthAfrica).
