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ZIMBABWEAN coach Kaitano Tembo guided his South African side SuperSport United to a goalless draw away at Petro de Luanda in Luanda, Angola, in a CAF Confederation Cup match yesterday.
Tembo is guiding the club on a caretaker basis and he arrived in Luanda aware that another Zimbabwean coach Norman Mapeza had suffered a 0-3 defeat in a Champions League match at the hands of an Angolan side recently.
But Tembo, who replaced his boss Eric Tinkler last week after the later parted ways with SuperSport United following a poor run of results, escaped with a goalless draw from Luanda.
Tembo rested almost 11 senior players from the match at the Estadio 11 de Novembro yesterday with SuperSport United making it clear their mission is to do well on the domestic front.
Despite the wholesale changes, Tembo would have been confident with the squad he put out as the likes of Sipho Mbule, Teboho Mokoena and the club’s leading goalscorer Aubrey Modiba formed the back bone.
The clash promised much excitement as the Angolans carried a stellar home record going into the clash as they had not lost in their own backyard in 27 previous encounters.
SuperSport’s young troops though, were determined to impress their coach and in the first half, they looked the better of the two sides. Modiba threatened early on but his shot flew just wide after some good build-up play.
The Tshwane side was enjoying themselves and again came close, only for Sipho Mbule’s shot to fly just over the crossbar.
Meanwhile, the heat was beginning to take its toll on the players as they were tiring, but after a water break, Mokoena came closest to opening the scoring. The 21-year-old latched onto Modiba’s pin-point cross, but his header went agonisingly wide of the home side’s goal.
In spite of SuperSport’s dominance, they failed to find the back of the net and went into the break deadlocked.
While Tembo would have hoped for SuperSport to snatch a valuable away goal, the resumption of the second half was again tightly contested with Petro de Luanda also coming more into the game as the half progressed.
With almost an hour played, SuperSport keeper Reyaad Pieterse was forced into a fantastic save keeping the scoreline level, this led to the SuperSport technical team withdrawing forward Darren Smith for experienced defender Onismor Bhasera.
But while SuperSport looked destined to walk away with a draw, with less than five minutes remaining, Petro came within a whisker of raining on SuperSport’s parade as they had a shot which cannoned off the woodwork, much to the relief of the visiting team.
Nonetheless, despite Petro’s pressure, SuperSport remained resolute and held on for the draw. – Sports Reporter/Goal.com.
Online Reporter