Having looked forward to seeing how Mamelodi Sundowns would, first and foremost, handle the pressure of having to beat Tanzanian side Young Africans at home in the all-important second leg of their CAF Champions League quarter-final at Loftus Versfeld on Friday, let me start off by saying I feel vindicated for writing last week that I wasn’t sure if they would handle the pressure well.
The 0-0 draw in that match – the second goalless stalemate in six days between the two sides – and how poorly they played on the night, reinforced my opinion that the mighty Brazilians still have a lot to learn about emotional intelligence in the big Champions League games.
To be fair, they weren’t as nervous as they were against, say, Wydad Athletic Club in last season’s semi-final when they lost on the away goals rule, but they certainly made a series of poor decisions on this occasion, too, such as passing too much when trying to break down a low block, and releasing the ball too early on the rare counter-attack.
It was thanks to goalkeeping genius Ronwen Williams and three terrific penalties by Marcelo Allende, Lucas Ribeiro, and Neo Maema that they eventually secured their place in this year’s semi-finals, where they will now meet Esperance de Tunis, who also needed penalties to see off Ivorian side ASEC Mimosas on Saturday night.
Interesting as the Friday night contest was, the match will now be unfortunately remembered for the controversial moment in which Yanga had a disallowed ‘goal’ in the second half.
Their talismanic attacker Stephane Aziz Ki had a blinder after the restart, and had his finest moment of the match when he beat Williams, only to have his fine close-range effort hit the crossbar and bounce on the goal line before the ball got back onto the pitch.
Admittedly, it was strange that the referee did not find it necessary to have a closer look at the incident himself on the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) screen, but he did consult with the VAR before ruling that it was a no-goal.
One imagines that it was communicated to him that the replays did not help much with ascertaining whether the entire circumference of the ball had crossed the line, as the images on television certainly did not make it any easier to say.
Be that as it may, Yanga feel aggrieved, and their coach Miguel Gamondi went as far as saying in his post-match press conference that they were ‘robbed’, and have thus launched an official request for the Confederation of African Football (CAF) to investigate the possibility of an “administrative error and match-fixing” incident.
What hogwash!
It’s very unfortunate that the club would take the stance of many a footballer supporter who have since flooded social media to complain along similar lines, throwing all sorts of ignorant accusations at the Confederation and its president, Patrice Motsepe who, needless to say, has strong Sundowns links. To my amusement, I also came across social media posts by journalists who also claimed it was “clear” to see that Aziz’s effort was supposed to have been given as a goal.
How all of these people came to that conclusion when the trained professionals in the VAR room at Loftus, as well as the television replays, were all uncertain, is beyond comprehension.
With their official complaint, I feel that Yanga are misdirecting their anger and missing the opportunity to raise the greater issue of a lack of adequate resources that could be enhancing football on the continent. That we don’t have goal-line technology that would have assisted the on-field referee on Friday night is one of the fundamental problems.
The VAR itself is only being used in the Champions League from the knockout stages, making room for even more errors to be made in the earlier stages of the competition. These, in my opinion, are the more serious issues that African clubs should be raising to the powers that be instead of throwing insults at counterparts because results have not gone in their favour.
If Sundowns’s showing on the pitch on Friday was proof that they still have a lot to learn about how to manage their anxiety, then Young Africans’s off-field antics show that they have some way to go before they can be regarded as a big club.
* Featured image: SNL24
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