Lobi Stars head coach, Solomon Ogbeide has blamed his team’s defeat to Mamelodi Sundowns to the early goal they conceded at the Lucas Moripe Stadium, Pretoria on Saturday in a Caf Champions League tie.
The Nigerian league champions needed a positive result against the Brazilians last weekend to rekindle their faint hope of advancing to the next stage of Africa’s club flagship club competition but they were blown apart 3-0.
Sundowns started the game brightly with their opening goal in the fourth minute of the encounter through Thapelo Morena before further goals from Themba Zwane and lebohang Maboe made it more emphatic but Ogbeide stated that the result would have been different had they weathered through the first half of the game without conceding a goal.
“It was so unfortunate that we lost to Mamelodi Sundowns despite our preparation for that game. We lost it due to the early goal because we had our plans mapped out to surprise them but the goal we conceded at the time we did turned everything around against us,” Ogbeide told the media.
“We had an improved game in the second half but the first half performance proved to be our undoing. We had some issues going to the game but it was not the type of result that we expected. We hope to learn a lot from the games we have played in the competition this next to help us in our future participation.
“We hope to bounce back from this defeat and chart a way forward. We are going back home to do a holistic study of what we might have done wrong or right. We apologise for our woeful performance in Pretoria.”
Ogbeide noted that even though they would be playing against ASEC Mimosas just for pride, they are hoping to end the group stage with a win to ensure that they pick further valuable points before exiting the competition.
“We are going to approach the final group game with the required seriousness while hoping that we have learned a lot from this competition,” he continued.
“We hope to stage a comeback in the competition at the earlier possible period. It was disappointing that we had to leave the stage at this time.”
