Cape Town - Ajax Cape Town are stuck in a revolving loop of Groundhog Day, that insane situation where undesirable things keep happening in exactly the same way over and over again.
It’s a bit like the movie “Groundhog Day” in which actor Bill Murray is doomed to repeat the same day every day until he gets it right.
The Cape side lost 2-1 to Orlando Pirates at the Cape Town Stadium on Tuesday - and the result and performance were an exact replica of what has ailed the team for the last few seasons. They dominated possession and played some great football, but were undone by schoolboy lapses in concentration which led to them conceding two soft goals. Their build-up work was excellent and they created some promising scoring opportunities, but were let down by a lack of decisiveness in front of goal. The two previous sentences epitomise the problems at the root of Ajax’s failure to live up to potential - but the words could just as easily have been written four or five years ago. No difference. The woes that distinguish the current Ajax squad are the same sorrows that bedevilled previous eras of the Cape club.
Pirates may be termed as a big club in the PSL, and they may currently top the PSL standings - but, in truth, they were decidedly second-best against Ajax on Tuesday. The outcome was simple: The Urban Warriors played the football, the Buccaneers got the goals. And that was it.
“Just five minutes of madness and it cost us,” said Ajax coach Roger de Sa. “Rivaldo (Coetzee) got caught out on the first goal and we lost possession in midfield for the second, and that was it. Pirates are a good team with good players and, if you give them half a chance, they are going to take it.
“We had more chances on goal and we have to learn to take those chances, that was probably the difference, in that they had that little bit of quality in the final third. We had them on the ropes in the last 20 minutes. They were just holding on, they weren’t like a Pirates team that I would imagine, but they got the job done.
As for Pirates coach Muhsin Ertugral, while he’ll take the win, he wasn’t a happy man.
“We knew Ajax would come at us,” said Ertugral. “Our plan was to hit them on the counter and it worked when we got the two goals. But I wasn’t happy with our organisation in the midfield and our patterns weren’t very good.
“There is still a lot to work on. I still need to get to know the players better and we have to work on a second system. When we win the ball, I want the players to know what to do next. And when we lose the ball, we also have to know how to respond. The win was important, though. This is Pirates, and they always have to challenge for things. There are areas we need to work on, but games like these have to be won, it doesn’t matter how.”
For De Sa, though, at least, it’s not all doom and gloom. As he suggests, “the performance was good, the result not great.”
There was merit in the defeat, so there’s something for him to work on. We have to be more clinical in front of goal,” said De Sa. “It was a good effort against Pirates, but finishing is an area we need to improve on.”
Cynics, of course, would respond: “Yeah, right, we’ve heard all of this before.”
The challenge now for De Sa and his squad is to wake up from this severe bout of Groundhog Day and strive for something new and positive, like winning games that are there for the taking.
Cape Times