AmaZulu FC head coach Benni McCarthy believes he will get more out of the team’s narrow loss to Raja Casablanca on Saturday night.
Usuthu were narrowly beaten 1-0 by the Moroccan giants in their opening CAF Champions League Group B match which was played at the Stade Mohamed V in Casablanca.
“A little bit of miscommunication in our defence in terms of clearing the ball and allowing Raja in behind and they scored the all-important goal,” McCarthy said.
“But I think we could have done better with our defending, I think we could have done better in front of goal.
“We didn’t really work the goalkeeper too much because we couldn’t hit the target and if you want to win football matches you’ve got to put the ball in the back of the net when the chances come and that didn’t happen.”
The only goal of the match was netted by Mouhcine Moutouali in the 67th minute and McCarthy feels that there were too many game stoppages after they conceded against the three-time African champions.
“Then you go and concede a goal a few minutes later and the opposition go 1-0 up and it becomes a game of delaying tactics, players going down unnecessary when they’re not injured and it disturbs our rhythm,” he continued.
“You don’t get five or six moments where you can create situations because there is always a player down injured and it’s stop-start, stop-start, you don’t win the game.
“Overall it was a nice experience for us, a good first match and now we’ve got recovery to do and travel back to South Africa until we face our next game and hopefully we take a lot of positives from this game into our next game and come good with a victory.”
AmaZulu will now take on Guinean giants AC Horoya in their second Group B match which is set to be played at Moses Mabhida Stadium on Friday.
