TS Galaxy TD Nermin Basic was full of praise for Jacksa Spears after a "very, very tough" Nedbank Cup quarter-final. The Rockets are through to the final four, but the focus now turns to tightening up the defence for the Premiership run-in. Photo: Backpagepix
Image: Backpagepix
TS Galaxy technical director Nermin Basic has praised amateur outfit Jacksa Spears after the Rockets secured a victory to reach the semi-finals of the Nedbank Cup on Sunday.
Galaxy eventually proved too strong in the quarter-final clash, but Basic admitted the lower-division side made life far more difficult than many expected. The Rockets were forced to remain patient throughout the contest before goals from Salatiel Silva and Tshepo Kakora sealed their progression.
For Basic, the performance of Spears justified their remarkable run to the latter stages of South Africa’s premier knockout competition.
“Very very tough game, I think we played better the first half than the second half. The second half was very difficult for us because of the win also but in the end we scored the goals in good time,” Basic said.
Despite dominating large spells of the encounter, Galaxy struggled to create clear chances and had to rely on discipline and mentality to avoid the type of upset that has characterised several fixtures in this year’s tournament.
“I think it was a really good time when the game went up and down, we played not so well with the ball. We didn’t create a lot of chances but what we did well, [our] mentality I think, we prepared the game well.
“It’s not easy to play against these teams and I must say, very, very big congratulations to our opponents, they played the first half really well, very compact with good transitions.”
Basic acknowledged that the cup encounter also highlighted areas Galaxy will need to improve when they return to the Betway Premiership. While pleased with the result, the Bosnian coach admitted the performance exposed certain defensive concerns the team is working to address.
The fixture also allowed Galaxy to showcase the growing depth within their squad following the lifting of the club’s Fifa transfer ban.
One of the beneficiaries was Kakora, who marked his opportunity with a goal after being introduced into the team.
“Every player is important especially when you must have 18, 20 players to have a good training session. In every position you must have two good players, to have competition,” Basic added.
“When you have good competition, you have better performance on every player, that means every player is important but you can’t see every player because some we signed and they are on the bench.
“They need time, it’s very difficult at the moment to come with new players inside, we have our game model, we just trust the game model. We trust the process also, in every game we lose, the last five games in the PSL, we created a lot of opportunities, that means we have a little bit of a problem in the defense.
“We tried to fix this with the mentality, with the meetings, with the training sessions but every player is important at TS Galaxy.”
* Smiso Msomi is a senior football reporter for Independent Media and senior contributor for our YouTube channel The Clutch