Golden Arrows head coach Lehlohonolo Seema has praised the fighting spirit of his team after they beat SuperSport United in a penalty shootout on Saturday to reach the MTN8 semi-finals.
Arrows will play Mamelodi Sundowns in the last four, after Sundowns shootout win over Kaizer Chiefs.
The new Arrows coach, who replaced Mandla Ncikazi, was delighted to get through to the next round, and said the hard work put in by the team paid off.
He was also happy with his team’s conditioning, as his team kept running for 120 minutes.
After taking the lead, SuperSport levelled matters to take the game to extra time. When SuperSport scored again, it looked like they were heading to victory before an Arrows equaliser two minutes from time took it to penalties where Seema’s team prevailed.
“If you have a special group of boys, that are ready to fight like this, then we can only say well done to them, their hard work is paying off,” Seema said after the match.
“Ja, we expected this kind of game, and going into extra time, you could see we kept on going and we never looked out of breath. And that is encouraging also, showing that conditioning wise we are going.
“It’s the first game of the season, yes, preseason is still going, that means we still need more games to play so that the guys can gel together, and we are happy that we can get another two more games also in the second round. So I’m happy for Golden Arrows going to the second round.”