Cape Town - Cape Town City coach Eric Tinkler said he told his squad they could play with gay abandon because Premiership champions Mamelodi Sundowns were overwhelming favourites to defeat them on Tuesday.
After the game at Loftus, which ended in a 0-0 draw, Tinkler said no one gave his team a chance of winning. He told his players to play with freedom because they had nothing to lose.
“You know, I called this clash a freebie," said Tinkler. "I said to the players they need to use this as a freebie. Nobody cares about how you will do, because they are expecting you’re going to lose.
“So go out there and express yourselves and play without fear. I still felt that we did not do that. We could’ve done it a little bit better and express ourselves fully."
Tinkler was pleased with the outcome, more so since they played with 10 players in the second half.
"In the end, I was pleased with the point," said Tinkler. "It was a matter of taking the point and running, considering we had to play with 10 players in the end.
"We knew it wasn’t going to be an easy match. Sundowns are a quality team, and you can see the way they set themselves up.
"We were looking to be a lot better in possession, especially in our build-up phase.
“You know, there were three or four situations, especially in the first half, when we gave the ball away cheaply, and we had to scramble a lot.
“But there were also a few situations where we got out of that initial press and that’s when we looked dangerous.
"We needed to see a little bit more of that free-flowing football and move the ball a lot more with speed.
"We know they are a very good counter-pressing team. They got a lot of numbers around the ball and we struggled to get it out of those tight situations quick enough and early enough.
“Also in terms of our wingers today Thami (Thamsanqa Mkhize) and (Darwin Gonzalez), you know we were hoping that their full-backs would play a lot deeper but they didn’t and actually pushed on high.
“We needed to utilise the space behind them a little bit better and we spoke about that at halftime. We created one or two chances, but so did they in that first half.”
At the start of the second half, Tinkler brought on Cameroon-born Brice Ambina, a box-to-box midfielder. However, he did not last long on the field of play because he picked up two yellow cards in quick succession
“At the start of the second half, I made that change with Ambina because they were overloading that middle of the park with (Neo) Maema, (Teboho) Mokena and (Marcelo) Allende,” Tinkler said.
“We needed to fix that and Ambina came in and I thought we dealt with that a lot better, but then once he got the red card.
“That put us on the back foot and we now had to look to play on the counter and hold out as much as we possibly could. In the end, it was a brave performance, a hard-working performance from the team."
City will next be in action against a beleaguered AmaZulu at Cape Town Stadium on Sunday.
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