Tinkler – We Didn’t Win The Physical Battle

A frustrated Eric Tinkler said his team failed to take their chances and lost the physical battles, as they lost 2-1 after extra-time to AmaZulu in the MTN8 quarter-finals on Saturday.

After conceding early at Athlone Stadium, City fought back to level matters before half-time, but despite many opportunities failed to score in the second half, and the match went to extra time where Usuthu grabbed a later.

Tinkler was very disappointed at losing out in the game, as he had hoped to get to the final again like they did last season.

But he said his team didn’t take their chances, and in the end they lost the physical battle, and AmaZulu were able to clinch the win.

“Ja, frustration, I think that’s what it is,” Tinkler said after the match.

“You concede an early goal from your own mistake, which immediately does put you on the backfoot.

“But you respond quite well, I think. You create numerous, a number of situations, where you need to be better in that final third. Get yourself back into the game,

you finished the first half, very strong, with more chances to really bury the game.

“The only time they really hurting you is from dead ball situations. Hitting the front three, which is what you knew would happen. We didn’t deal with that well enough.

“But still, I felt we were in control. We tended to panic sometimes when we needed to be a little bit more patient. We spoke about that at halftime.

“And ja, the longer it went on, the fatigue started coming in, both teams, and then it was a case of who wanted more. And I think in terms of the physical battle, we didn’t win the physical battle today. And we needed to win that battle. It was too easy to bump us off, we didn’t pick up the second balls enough.

“And then we ended up conceding, late, in extra time. The substitutions also, I felt they could have helped a lot more. At least that was what I felt from the game.

“But ja, frustrating. Because you can do all the right things to get yourself into that final third, into that box, now that final decision that you gotta be making better choices.

“A lot of people will turn around and say, well, it’s lack of a striker. But that’s got nothing to do with the striker. It’s got to do about the service, and the service needs to be better.”

In this edition of iDiski Times, we hear from Kaizer Chiefs legend Bernard Parker after his move from Naturena to TS Galaxy. We also talk to Katlego Otladisa who, among other things, touches on the social media stir he was involved in around transfer rumours. There are also interviews with Bonginkosi Makume and Lasse Sobiech, while Pitso Mosimane admits that he would have loved to have had the current Mamelodi Sundowns team when he was coaching the team. Read all this and more in the full edition below: