Kasaona Football Academy booked their place in the U/19 finals when they overcame City Pillars Football Academy by beating them on penalties 4-5. 

In a tightly contested match that ended 1-all in normal time, it seemed like City Pillars FA were about to celebrate in the dying minutes when they fouled a player in the penalty box. 

Coach Matheus Hamupolo from Kasaona said it was a hard-fought victory, even though they had lady luck on their side in the last minutes of the game with a penalty. “Quite a good game, actually. It’s just that our tactics didn’t work. Even in the first half, we were playing much under pressure. Second half, we changed a bit of the tactics and the players also,” he said. 

The winning coach was not entirely satisfied with the team’s performance and plans to change their approach for the finals. It’s below par. “I’m not that happy with the performance. I am happy with the fighting spirit they had in the last 10 minutes. Yes, but overall, the performance was not that good. We had to fight. We had a goal for it. Fortunately, the goals were not coming. We had a lot of chances after that, but it was not coming. I have to give congratulations to the goalkeeper of my opponent, because he was outstanding,” he said. 

“We want to do better in the last game. Obviously, our backline was not full today. How should I say all the back lines were not there. So, we had to make shift changes. As you can see that we even had to put our front man at the right back, because there were no defenders on the touch line, even though we did not have enough players,” he ended. 

Elsewhere… 

Collin Benjamin’s Soccer Talents U/17 also booked their spot in the finals when they easily beat rivals Ramblers at the Jan Möhr football field on Saturday. They now set up a date with Baller Boys, who won their match against Dama Soccer Academy 8-7 on penalties. On the other hand, Riverheights U/19 finished strong, also booking their spot when they managed to beat Ramblers 1-0 at the same venue. 

-slunyangwe@ nepc.com.na