Chiefs coach: It was a game of two halves

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Kaizer Chiefs coach Giovanni Solinas

Kaizer Chiefs coach Giovanni Solinas admits that his side weren’t at their best in the Telkom Knockout last-16 victory against Black Leopards.

Lidoda Duvha pushed Amakhosi all the way, dominating for large spells in their TKO clash, but it wasn’t to be for the visitors, who succumbed to a 4-2 defeat on penalties after heroics from goalkeeper Virgil Vries.

Solinas – who was without the services of six key players in Leonardo Castro, Khama Billiat, Lebogang Manyama, Dumisani Zuma, Siyabonga Ngezana and Daniel Cardoso – admits that Chiefs were far from perfect in the first half of the game.

‘First half, my boys did not play well. But at half-time we fixed the mistakes, we talked about the problem,’ he said in post-match comments.

‘In the second half, I saw another Kaizer Chiefs. In the second half, the performance was outstanding, also in extra time.

‘The distance was not right, we did not press the ball. The distance was not right in between the departments [lines].

‘Defensively we had no coordination of movement with the ball. So always we opened the space, this was the main problem. We needed to move the ball quickly from one side to another,’ he concluded.

The Italian mentor will be hoping that his side perform as they did in the second half against arch-rivals Orlando Pirates in their next Absa Premiership encounter on Saturday afternoon with kick-off set for 3:30pm.

Photo: Backpagepix