Malesela insists his TS Galaxy team will score goals 

In his days at Chippa United, Malesela made the side play some exciting football but couldn’t get the required results which resulted in his sacking.

But he insists that the Rockets will be a free-scoring side as he has put emphasis on goal scoring during his training sessions.

“It’s the first thing I emphasized with the players was to say, ‘look, I don’t want to be criticized by people again who always say I play for possession’,” said Malesela during a SA Football Journalists Association media conference recently.

He said while he understood the criticism his teams got for not scoring goals and winning matches, he feels it is sometimes uncalled for.

“When Barcelona plays they keep possession and nobody says anything, maybe it’s because they score goals. And there are times when they also don’t score… But one has worked very hard on scoring and converting the chances because we are trying to lose this thing of people saying we don’t score. We must play for a purpose.

“There must be a reason behind every single move we make. There must be a reason why you pass, a reason why you don’t take a shot on goal, a reason why you take a shot on goal.

“We are hoping that will work for us. We do some drills focused on goal scoring and you can see there is desire to score, there’s hunger to score. We are not just training and getting excited. There is this interpretation from the players that I get excited because they can pass the ball around and people start whistling. They should not even be getting excited because it’s their duty to do that, to keep the ball away from the opponents,” added Malesela.

The Rockets begin their Premiership campaign against another new side, Tshakhuma Tsha Madzivhandila (TTM) away in Venda on Sunday and Malesela said he is not paying any mind to the events that’s been happening with their opponent. TTM have been chaotic in their preseason preparations and rumours that the players were not paid have also surfaced.

“I will not pay any mind to that. I remember one time when I was a Chippa and we were going to play Bloemfontein Celtic and rumours were flying around that their players had not been paid and would be on a go-slow but they played their best in the game. So, I am not even thinking about their problems,” said Malesela.