Goncalves vows to improve Young Africans despite Fountain Gate triumph

Young Africans coach Pedro Goncalves has challenged the Tanzanian Premier League champions to improve in their game despite registering a 2-0 victory against Fountain Gate on Thursday.

After a strong start from Fountain Gate, they gave away a penalty in the 29th minute which allowed the Citizens to take the lead against the run of play. Zimbabwean forward Prince Dube stepped up to score the opener from the spot.

Yanga went into the half-time break enjoying a 1-0 lead but they had to wait until the 81st minute to score their second. A move initiated by Kenyan midfielder Duke Abuya set up Pacome Zouzoua to round off the hard-fought win.

Yanga must start to play good football

“We must look for our performance, it was still very difficult work to break them down, and we had a lot of setbacks, and we faced some difficulties because of how Fountain Gate paraded, we couldn’t manage them easily,” Goncalves told Pan-Africa Football.

“However, I am very happy with the overall performance, but surely we must improve in the future, but it was the first time we had some players, who had their opportunity to play for the team, to grab that opportunity to play for Yanga.

“To play for Yanga, you must have some high level, and when you have the opportunity, we give you a chance to improve, they performed well, and I am happy to have the fans around, they pushed as well, and we want now to reset, and recover for Sunday’s match.”

He continued: “Fountain Gate resorted to play a total of nine players behind the back which was difficult to handle, as much as we managed to get the two goals, it was that difficult to break them down, we created chances, and in the end the 2-0 outcome is a better result from the game.”

Fountain Gate head coach Mohamed Laizer admitted they lost the game immediately they gave Yanga the penalty to take the lead in the first half.

“We wanted to have many players behind the ball, so that we could frustrate them, but the moment they got the opportunity from the penalty spot, things changed our game plan completely,” said Laizer.

“Our plan really worked, we had managed to contain them, we have now lost two straight matches in a row, we wanted a result from this game, the second half, we created like four chances but we couldn’t score, and we needed to come out with something from this game.”

The win saw Yanga move to third on the log with 13 points accumulated from four wins, one draw, and zero defeats.

⚽ Follow Pan-Africa Football across platforms for real-time news and stories.