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Coach Benni McCarthy has said AmaZulu will not approach the CAF Champions League second round home game against TP Mazembe the way the South Africans did against Malawi’s Nyasa Big Bullets in the preliminary round.
McCarthy said this in a post-match press conference on Thursday morning ahead of the DStv Premiership team’s meeting with the Congolese giants at Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban on Friday.
The former Bafana Bafana star striker said they learnt a lot from the 0-1 home loss to Bullets and the 3-1 away win at Bingu National Stadium in Lilongwe on the way to the second round.
However, McCarthy said the former Champions League winners from Lubumbashi were a different proposition compared to the Malawi champions; hence the need for a ‘smart and calculative approach.’
“Nyasa Big Bullets is Nyasa Big Bullets and TP Mazembe is completely different. You can’t compare lambs with wolves. There you have to be technically smart, you have to control the game and you have to be possession-based team if you are to win the game,” he said.
McCarthy said he needs to strike a balance between the attacking approach Amazulu deployed in Lilongwe against Bullets with pragmatism as Mazembe can hit the South Africans on the break tomorrow.
“We want to be sensible and calculative…we are putting a very offensive team that can go, play good football and can score goals…we also have to be a team that if Mazembe come at us, we are also capable of defending,” he said.
AmaZulu are playing in the continental league for the first-time ever after having finished second in the DStv Premiership last season and McCarthy said the target was to reach the group stages.
We can’t approach Mazembe like Nyasa Big Bullets—McCarthy (africatopsports.com)