By Benjamin Nyirenda
DStv Premiership side Royal AM had to come back from a 2-0 lead to beat GladAfrica side University of Pretoria 3-2 in the quarterfinals of the Nedbank Cup on Sunday afternoon. With only a minute in injury time to go, Royal AM scored the winning goal, and this had coach John Maduka singing his player’s praises. Speaking after the much, coach Maduka told Footballive that his side showed some fighting spirit.
Maduka said that the 2-0 lead did not put them down; they never gave up because they knew in football anything can happen as long as you keep on fighting.
“We knew from the start that it won’t be an easy game. We saw how they played against Chippa United and won the game so we had to be resilient and fight until the end. We had to change the approach in the second half because we were 2-0 down and made sure that we pressurize them and that paid off at the end.
“Everyone thought the game will go into extra time but we wanted to finish it of in the regular 90 minutes and to do that we had to fight until the end. The boys showed character and we grinded out the results which is very good, ” Maduka said.
The Malawian born coach added that now their focus was on the semi-finals where they will face high flying Mamelodi Sundowns.
” This game is over and now our focus is on the semifinals. It will be a different ball game all together but we can’t go ahead of ourselves. We will take one game at a time because there are other games in the league before we play Sundowns. So we will take one game at a time until that one comes, ” the former Bloemfontein Celtic coach concluded.