Gallants coach Malesela grateful to have reached Cup semifinals

Marumo Gallants coach Dan Malesela is happy to see his side going through to the semifinals of the Nedbank Cup, but he believes his charges took their opponents very lightly. 

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Gallants edged neighbours Baroka FC 1-0 in the last eight clash of the Ke Yona Cup played at the Peter Mokaba Stadium on Saturday. 

Sede Junior Dion scored the only goal of the match with only 10 minutes of regular time remaining, thanks to an assist by another substitute Monde Mpambaniso to win the Limpopo derby. Despite some errors from his team, Malesela was just pleased that his team is now a step further to clinching the Cup of dreams.

“Well, there are two things that I think our team must be careful of is that, when you look at faces don’t underestimate them. Because we are dominating but we are not playing with that oomph that we need to play with. But as soon as we made changes (things worked out). I’m grateful to Monde, because he put up a good shift create the goal we scored and Junior did well by getting inside the box.

“Sometimes you get these things, particularly in knockout matches where there is a lot of tension and the players are worried about the next stage instead of what is happening now,” said the Gallants coach, who won the Nedbank Cup back in 2019 with TS Galaxy, while the club was still playing in the GladAfrica Championship. 

“But, having said that, we are very grateful to have won the match. We are very grateful to have gotten to the next round. All praise must go to the boys. Yes, with all our mistakes, but everyone makes mistakes, the opponents made mistakes. We are just grateful to go to the next round.”