Strauss Lunyangwe
Deutscher Turn und Sportverein Football Academy U/13 (DTS) comfortably collected maximum points recently by beating Swallows 4-1 in the MTC HopSol Youth League Group B match at the Telecom Football Field.
The U/13 came off a two-month break without any competitive football, shrugged off the rustiness, and got straight to business in a bid to cement their place in the quarterfinals.
DTS was all out in attack from the onset, troubling Swallows’ defence and putting them on the back foot. DTS coach Mabasa Kufahakutizwi hailed his boys’ performance as they continued their winning streak.
“It was very important to get a positive result my boys have not been playing any competitive football for over two months now, so we had to get into the groove of playing competitive matches again,” he explained.
Kufahakutizwi feels it’s always difficult when you stay out of the HopSol League for such a lengthy period and come back to get good results.
“We struggled a bit, but our opponents were not in full complement, which gave us the numerical advantage the entire match. This made it difficult because they were sitting back, making it difficult to break their defence. In the second half, we started playing out from the back with our passing game before we could take shots at goal,” he explained.
This helped them move the ball around, as they avoided first-half mistakes by unnecessarily losing the ball.
“In the first half, we were a little bit selfish; we did not play as a team; we played one-touch and two-touch here and there. That is not recommended when you are playing against a team that is low on numbers because you have to utilise the space and make use of the depth of the field, which we didn’t,” he said.
Meanwhile, Virgilio Hamaseb, the Swallows U/13 coach, said he was disappointed at the scoreline but felt it could have been worse as they were only eight on the pitch.
“What I picked up in today’s match is that we lacked communication, and the most important thing is training. Absenteeism is very high on the team, as most of the players did not know we were playing today,” he said. Hamaseb felt the boys stuck to the game plan, but things went out of control as the boys started getting tired, which allowed their opponents to take control of the match.
“The boys could no longer run because there were few on the pitch, they had to play two roles at the same time, which made them tired in the end and lost their concentration.
We just have to go back to our training schedule and come back again. Things can turn out better for us if we are consistent,” he concluded.
Innocent Gaseb from Swallows said his team went down to a much superior opponent.
“We played very badly because the guys who came to train were not the ones who showed up to come play. I also feel that when we changed the goalkeeper, things went wrong, but we were just eight in the field and they were 12,” he said.
The win puts DTS at an advantage in Group B with 27 points, guaranteeing them a spot in the next round, while Swallows languish in the seventh position with only one point.