Cape Town City head coach Eric Tinkler says that while they qualified for the MTN8 final this week, their focus now is on the DStv Premiership, starting with their game against Orlando Pirates.
City beat Swallows 4-0 in the semi-final second leg on Wednesday to book their place in the final against Mamelodi Sundowns.
“I’m not even thinking that far,” Tinkler said when asked about the final at the end of October.
“To be honest I’m thinking about Orlando Pirates. That’s where our focus turns right now.
“We’ve got a whole month in terms of our preparation leading to that final and in between there are some important league matches for us to complete.
“So so I think everybody’s focus now turns to that, you know, so only the week leading up to that cup final will we start focusing on Mamelodi Sundowns, and how we aim to to be competitive against them.”
Tinkler says as a team they’ve set targets, and while by reaching the final they’re on route in the MTN8, they need to get back on track in the league.
“At the beginning of the season, we set ourselves objectives and targets,” Tinkler continued.
“One of those targets was obviously to win the MTN8. We find ourselves in the final so we stand an opportunity there.
“The other objective was to ensure that we look to try and finish in the top four. Currently we find ourselves in 11th position. So we’ve still going to try and meet those targets, those objectives.
“Those games now become important as well, not only the MTN8 and there’s a whole 30 odd days from now until we get that final, and there’s three league matches that need to be played in between.
“So you know, that’s nine points. Nine points are extremely important to us trying to achieve those objectives and goals that we set ourselves.
“I don’t want to call it, ‘talk is cheap,’ important when we set ourselves targets that we try and meet those targets, and everybody needs to take responsibility in that.
“It cannot only be me as the coach, it’s not only my job to get people motivated, players need to be motivated, players needs to be focused, players need to remind themselves that these were targets not set by by others, they were set by us as a team, collectively, we set those targets, so we all need to buckle down and work hard to achieve that.”
