Caps United coach Lloyd Chitembwe struggled to hold back tears, overcome by emotion, after his defence leaked like a sieve to surrender a first-half lead and lose 4-2 to Al Ahli Tripoli, in their Caf Champions League Group B football match here at the Stade Taieb Mhiri on Wednesday night – a result that destroyed any hopes of them qualifying for the competition’s group stages.
BY TAWANDA TAFIRENYIKA IN SFAX, TUNISIA
It was a second successive 4-2 defeat to the same opponents following their first meeting in Harare early this month, leaving the Zimbabwean champions at the bottom of the group with three points and very slim hopes of progressing to the next round.
To go through to the quarter-finals, Caps United now need to win their remaining two matches, a home match against Egyptian giants Zamalek (5 points) on July 2 and an away trip to group leaders USM Alger of Algeria (7 points), and hope that results elsewhere go their way.
Tripoli, who started the campaign slowly, are second in the group on goal difference. The group winner and runner-up advance to the quarter-finals of the knockout stage.
While Chitembwe and his team could be said to have surpassed expectations by reaching this stage, it was the manner that they capitulated here that left the former midfielder and the club’s supporters disappointed.
“It’s really disappointing. We have never played as bad as we did today,” said Chitembwe after the match. “We started strongly and to score two goals away, we expected to kill off the match. I am very disappointed we failed to do basic things like defending. I made my feelings known to the players. It was down to lack of effort and experience at this level of the game,” the dejected and downcast-looking coach added.
After a bright start in which United carved out good chances, they found themselves trailing 1-0 courtesy of Saleh Al-Taher, who scored on 16 minutes.
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Ronald Pfumbidzai responded spectacularly for Chitembwe’s men, curling the ball from the corner kick straight into the nets three minutes later, and Ronald Chitiyo gave the Zimbabweans the lead towards halftime where the team enjoyed a good spell and should have scored at least three more goals before the break.
However, when everyone, except the Libyans of course, expected the Green Machine to carry on from where they had left in the first half into the second stanza, they somehow just collapsed.
Just three minutes into the second half, Al Taher equalised for Tripoli for his second goal of the match, and Mohammed Al-Ghanudi made it 3-2 before Mouayad Al-Lafi completed the rout.
It was another game to forget for defender Justice Jangano, culpable for almost all the goals Caps conceded when the two teams faced each other in Harare, as he was once again found wanting throughout the Wednesday match.
It would be a complete injustice though to pile all the blame on the long-bearded defender as almost all the Caps United players failed to turn up for the second half.
