
Photo Courtesy Sundowns Media.
AS FAR head coach Jamil Benouahi has revealed the approach they took to snatch a 1-1 draw against Mamelodi Sundowns in their final fixture of the Caf Champions League at the Loftus Versfeld on Sunday.
The two African giants met in the Group B finale with both sides already qualified for the knockout stages of the lucrative competition. However, there was one thing at stake, while Sundowns needed a win to top the group, AS FAR required a draw to stay top.
It was the Moroccan outfit, who got what they needed from the battle – a draw – to finish at the top. Speaking afterwards, coach Benouahi explained their game plan saying they had shown their character coming from a goal down to level matters in the second period.
“We came here with a plan. We came here with targets and these targets were: to finish top of the group and secondly, we were looking for the experience of playing away against strong and good teams like Mamelodi Sundowns and get good results,” Benouahi said as quoted by CAFOnline.com.
“We were losing 1-0 at half-time and we came back again, and this group shows character and quality. We had that many times against Mamelodi Sundowns in Morocco, we had that in Kinshasa, and we had that in our league as well and we needed to show how strong we can be.”
His Sundowns counterpart Miguel Cardoso said: “For the longest time we did not experience a week that allowed us to work and I think it is obvious that during first half we were quite compact, quite strong as a team and we controlled the whole game.
“We had a lot of chances to kill the game and make a second goal and to finish the game but then it was more difficult to manage the second half especially the last 20 minutes. So we could not keep the same level throughout the 90 minutes of the game and because of that we suffered. We made a mistake.”
He concluded: “Like I said in the MD-1 press conference that the details will be very important. We knew that usually on situations that players from AS FAR could progress and enter the box they wouldn’t make a cut-back pass. We were prepared but unfortunately, we could not control this player and we suffered because of that.”
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