MC Alger head coach Khaled Ben Yahia was not prepared to speak about the off the field drama that took place at Orlando Stadium, nor the conduct of some of his players.
Yahia was not committed to speak about the unsavoury events that transpired at eSgodini on Wednesday evening which began with altercations with officials throughout the game, at the break and then chaotic scenes after full-time.
It appeared a scene straight out of movie, a royal rumble, for a lack of a better expression that ensued with the Algerian Ligue 1 champions said to have been the antagonists throughout, and even boiled over into the tunnel with backroom staff and local media clashing.
“Thank you, I’m here, I’m a coach, a technical coach who is here to speak about football and only football, if you have question regarding the game, you can ask me,” he said after the game at Orlando Stadium.
“Are you aware on a political point of view, Algeria and Tunisia, I’m Tunisian and we have a very close relationship with South Africa… unfortunately [we lost] but we played a good game, it was a quality game, a good spectacle, but we didn’t score.”
The two-time Tunisian league winning coach went on to state, he hopes the Buccnaneers progress beyond Pyramids in the semi-finals, whether it was disingenuous or poor translation from the designated man of the day, is up for debate, as the short-lived post-match media spectacle was completely summarised in this entire article.
“I congratulate Orlando Pirates for the qualification – I wish wholeheartedly love to Orlando Pirates and I’m hoping they will be finalists,” he stated.
“I will say it once again, I’m here to speak about football, we created opportunities, we were tactically on point, physically on point.
“We dominated the game, unfortunately, the only thing we didn’t have was the goal. Did you see a good game from our team or not?”
