Durban - Royal AM co-coach Abram “Wire” Nteo has expressed great pride in his team following their exit from the Caf Confederation Cup on Wednesday.
Following their much publicised ill-treatment by TP Mazembe in the first leg, tensions rose high before a ball was kicked as visiting fans clashed with the hosts with police personnel called up to calm control matters at Moses Mabhida Stadium.
On the field however it was Thwihli Thwahla who brought the fire, trying overcome the 2-0 advantage TP Mazembe had coming into the match.
However it was the visitors who grabbed the all-important goal on the day as they claimed a 3-0 win on aggregate, but Nteo expressed pride in his players and claimed the tie was a good learning experience.
"TP Mazembe showed that they've been competing in this competition for a while judging the way they played today," Nteo said.
"We tried to create a lot of chances today, but the ball just didn't want to go into the net, they also defended very well but I'm happy the boys played a game like this today and got an opportunity to compete with the best like TP Mazembe.
"I'm very proud of my boys and what we've achieved here today, yes we lost but we were playing against big teams so hopefully we can use this Caf experience to our advantage when we get back into the league."
The experienced Nteo also revealed that while a lot of factors influenced their exit from the competition, it was their inability in front of goal that let them down the most.
Even with the quality of players like Ruzaigh Gamilden, Mxolisi Macuphu and Motebang Sera, they could not score a single goal against the Congolese giants over the two legs.
"The 2-0 loss that we got when we played away was the deciding factor because when we came here we tried to score but couldn't because of their defending, but our main issue was not being able to put the ball in the back of the net," Nteo said.
"But this is something we can work on with the coaches and as I said, I'm happy with the performance of the boys and this will help us when we come back from the (World Cup) break."
Royal AM's exit means that Marumo Gallants remain as the only South African team in the competition after Cape Town City were knocked out by Algerian side USM Alger.
@SmisoScribe
Now watch: