YOUNG Africans believe there is still a hope and a chance for them to excel in the ongoing CAF Confederation Cup group stage, despite their two consecutive losses in their group A matches.
Yanga succumbed to a 0-1 loss to
Congolese giants TP Mazembe infront of their home supporters at the
National Stadium in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday. Mazembe’s Merveille Bope
netted the solitary goal late in the second half to give the visitors
precious maximum away points.
The defeat leaves Yanga in bottom of Group A without a single point from two matches.
Having already gone down to a similar
goal margin away to Algeria’s Mouloudia Olympique de Béjaïa in their
opening group match earlier this month, Yanga hopes of claiming a
semifinal berth have been reduced.
The Jangwani Street side now needs to
win all their remaining four matches, which include two away encounters
to have any chance of making it into the semifinals. Despite the latest
setback, Yanga head coach, Dutchman Hans Van der Pluijm, remained
adamant, insisting that his side still has a chance to do well in the
coming matches.
“We are still determined to restore our
hopes of finishing in the two top positions in the group,” said Pluijm.
“We are not out of the race and we will not give up until we are out. In
fact, we still have four games left and each team can win against each
other.
So if we can do well in our remaining
matches we can still have a chance to wind up our campaign among the two
top sides of the group,” he said shortly after the match. Commenting on
their match against Mazembe, Pluijm said that they lost against
experienced side.
However, he said the score line could
have been different if his team could make a better use of several
chances that they created in the first half. “TP Mazembe were dangerous
in their counter attacks, but we managed to contain them in the first
half.
And in major tournaments such as this,
if you do not make use of the chances you get, it becomes easy for your
side to lose the game,” he said. The tactician expressed appreciation on
the quality standard displayed by their newly signed players, attacking
midfielder Juma Mahadhi and Zambian international striker Obrey Chirwa.
“It was a good display for the debutants
and we believe there are more good things to come from them and other
new signings,” he said. On his side, TP Mazembe coach Frenchman Hubert
Velud, said they were a better side in the match and that is why they
got positive results against their opponents.
“We played well and attacked our
opponents through counter attacks and Ulimwengu (Thomas) played very
well in the game and even the goal we scored was the result of his
efforts,” said the former Togo national side tactician.
However, the Frenchman blamed match
official from Zambia Janny Sikazwe, allegedly for denying his team what
he claimed to be obvious two penalties. Following the victory, Mazembe
moved to six points at the top of Group A, having opened their account
with a 3-1 home win over Ghana’s Medeama earlier in the month.
The Algerian club Mouloudia was due to
face Ghana Madeama and a win for the former will see them joining the
DRC side on six points. Mazembe left Dar es Salaam yesterday for
Lubumbashi.
Mazembe, the equal second most
successful Confederation of African Football club with nine titles, were
demoted from the Champions League after being eliminated by Wydad
Casablanca of Morocco.
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