The second half of the 2023 MTC HopSol Youth League season kicked off this past weekend after a month-long break for the school holidays.
The first match in the U/19 league was between ACFA and CBS at the Trustco United Sports Field in Olympia.
ACFA, who are still in contention to make it to the knockout stages, started the match with only 10 players, which cost them as they went down to CBS 3-1.
Ebson Mbaha, Adriano Ganab, and James Mushandja registered their names on the score sheet for CBS, while Brandon Brinkmann pulled one back for ACFA towards the end of the match.
Coach Ricky Averia of ACFA said their opponents were a better team on the day as they came prepared for the match.
We’ve got a little bit of inexperience in the squad and are taking things for granted. It is also no excuse that we started off with 10 players today because that’s all the guys we could get. CBS were very organised in defence and in attack, which made it very difficult to break them down with only 10 men,” he explained.
CBS’ new gaffer, Henrico Botes, a former Brave Warriors captain, said they did not have a lot of time to train because of the school holidays, but he wanted to dust the cobwebs off for starters.
“The game plan was to play possession-based football and score some goals, but we became a bit complacent in the second half, which allowed ACFA to get one back. It is a learning curve, but I’m happy with their performance,” he said.
The former Platinum Stars striker wants his team to score more goals because that’s what wins games in the end.
“We are a possession-based team, and scoring goals is what we want to do. If you notice, we start from the back, play in phases, and create chances to score when we get there. So I’m happy with the creation but not so much with the conversion rate, but that we can work on,” he explained.
Meanwhile, Ramblers continued their winning streak (eight games since the start of the season) and solidified their position at the top of the league by winning 1-0 against Swallows on Saturday.
Raymond Vilander, coach of Ramblers, felt that his charges did not start so well as they only had one training session during the week.
“You could see today we only had 11 boys on the field and one sub for the match, So it was not a good performance from them in the first half. In the second half, we picked up, but we were wasteful because we were supposed to score three or four goals. But we’re going to start training officially on Monday (yesterday),” he said.
-slunyangwe@nepc.com.na