Posted in News on Dec 22, 2009.
The home team will be aiming to end the year on a winning note and jump straight back to winning ways after their disappointment of losing their last league encounter to fellow title contenders Sundowns on the weekend. Amazulu coach, Neil Tovey, will also be looking to sign off 2009 on a winning note as it will give his team breathing space between them and the bottom three teams in the league as he heads to his end of the year vacations.
Amakhosi captain Jimmy Tau is confident that his team have the mental strength to bounce back after the disappointment of losing to Sundowns at the weekend, “it was both bad and sad to lose against Sundowns and we would love to have won that game. We failed not as individuals but as a team and now it is our duty to regroup as a unit and win our final game of the year. It is our collective responsibility to remedy what went wrong in the last match”.
According to Tau playing the Usuthu soon after the loss to Sundowns is good for Chiefs as it gives them the opportunity to quickly put that loss behind them and go into the break a happier group, “this game against Amazulu is the final game of the year and we want to finish on a high. It is a new challenge for us and the opportunity presents itself for us to pick up another three points and put us in the top three, and hopefully in close proximity to the league leaders”.
Should Chiefs defeat Amazulu they could become the third team this season that Chiefs would have beaten both home and away after they recently did the double over Platinum Stars and Ajax Cape Town. And winning is all that matters to Tau, “we are not looking to make the stats column balance out, we just want three points and whatever effort is needed to finish to 2009 three points wealthier we will put it in”.
In the meantime Amazulu midfielder Tsweu Mokoro is relishing playing Chiefs and says that from past experience smaller teams wait all season long for the fixtures against the big teams like Chiefs.
As Mokoro explained “We can get the three points against Chiefs and they will be down after their loss in their last game against Sundowns. As a result of losing that game their confidence has taken a knock which is good for us. It is Chiefs who are going to panic and not us”.
A highly charged Mokoro further said of the match, “on the weekend we played Cosmos and it is more difficult for a team in our situation to play them than it is to play a team like Chiefs, because Cosmos are fighting for their lives. We don’t need any extra pep talk or motivation to play Chiefs; they are a team who are on top of the table as well as on top of their game which is more than enough to drive us to go all out for a win against them. After all it is Chiefs we are playing against, need I say more”?
With both teams in need of the points for different reasons Wednesday evenings match is likely to be an eventful one; it was Chiefs who picked up the points when the teams met in Durban earlier in the season as the Amakhosi won that match 3-2.
