Arrows brace for tricky TKO trip to SuperSport United
The biggest challenge in playing SuperSport United is that the players and their coach, Kaitano Tembo, have developed a great understanding, Steve Komphela believes.
Stephen Komphela has left Arrows to join Sundowns. Pic: Gerhard Duraan/BackpagePix)
Komphela has been preparing his Golden Arrows side to take on Matsatsantsa A Pitori in the Telkom Knockout quarterfinals today at the Mbombela Stadium, where Komphela reckons the match will be won by small margins.
“SuperSport are playing more as a unit and more as a team and their 4-3-3 formation is clear. They have also come to understand the work ethic because the players and the coach are together. They have accepted Kaitano Tembo and his work within the system and you can see that they have a good understanding, so coming up against them is going to be a difficult one and it might be decided on small detail,” said Komphela.
His concern about his own side is that they are not quite clinical in front of goal, but he also knows that goalscoring, or the lack thereof, is not a challenge that is unique to Abafana Bes’thende.
“It happens with all the coaches in the Premier Soccer League and you start to sound like a broken record because you repeat the same thing over and over again. Just saying it is not enough and we do a lot of work on the finishing. If there is a team that does finishing (practice) in the PSL is us.
“There is not a week that goes by, even our small sided games are about finishing. What happens in a match is something you are not in control of, you just have to keep guiding and keep doing it until it becomes second nature,” said Komphela, who is pleased with the form of Michael Gumede, and a couple of other players that he signed at the start of the season.
“I think they have adapted to the Arrows way of playing … they are technical and that is how Arrows plays, it is just natural for them to fit it. All that we have to do is create the pathways for them to adapt and act in sync, and they have adapted to that rhythm.”
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