Owen Da Gama, coach of Highlands Park during the 2020 Nedbank Cup Highlands Park Press Conference at the PSL Offices, Johannesburg on the 04 February 2020 ©Muzi Ntombela/BackpagePix
The Lions of the North made costly mistakes in their game against SuperSport United and ended up losing the game 2-0 last weekend, leaving Da Gama fuming.
“You have a good result, and this happens to us all the time when you approach the (next) game with an amateur attitude,” Da Gama said. “You beat Kaizer Chiefs, and you get a good result against Golden Arrows and now you think that you have arrived. You think that it’s going to happen automatically here.
“Everyone knew who they must pick up in the set-pieces, and then you don’t pick up Grobler, their most deadly player. Nobody picked him up!
“Nobody! And somebody knew that they had to pick him up. I don’t want to expose players, but how do you when you approach a game with a specific tactic and then a player does his own thing. It was like when we got to the final, people start to get excited and there is that amateur mentality of saying we have arrived now,” he added.
“Some of us have to be more professional and understand that you are in the team this year, and next year you could be out of it because we want to improve.
“If certain players don’t want to improve then we are going to have a problem. That’s how football works,” warned Da Gama.
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