Cape Town City coach Jan Olde Riekerink has described Kermit Erasmus as 'a genius' after his winner against Orlando Pirates on Sunday, but says their 1-0 Premier Soccer League victory over the Buccaneers was a collective effort as they overcame some numerical disadvantage to collect maximum points.
City played for almost an hour of the match with 10 men following a red card to Mpho Makola in the 33rd minute.
Erasmus then scored on the stroke of half time to condemn his former club Pirates to a six-match winless league run of two defeats and four draws.
“He has those exceptional qualities,” Riekerink told journalists after the match. “You know what’s important if you play the ball from the left side [where] we know that Surprise [Ralani] can play in between the lines so we know that we have to play the ball into his [Erasmus] feet and then he can make his action.
“He is a genius. If he plays, for example, on the right side Fagrie [Lakay] is there, we have to try and play the ball behind the defence and that happens with Kermit. The team showed him a lot of moments every time in the game that we didn’t play the ball to him.
After scoring the goal that defined their afternoon, Erasmus is now on 12 league goals this season, two below joint lead-scorers; Orlando Pirates’ Frank Mhango and Peter Shalulile of Highlands Park.
Erasmus' tally is the best he has managed in his professional career in a season, and three of those goals have come since the restart, helping City to three wins, including beating title-contenders Mamelodi Sundowns.
"He is also now focusing only on his position as a striker and the space behind the defence of the opponents and not anymore too much in the midfield. He is very dangerous for us and he had the feeling to score the goals.I think the team use him more [because of] his exceptional qualities.”
While the result puts Pirates’ chances of a top-three finish in serious jeopardy, it lifted the once relegation-threatened City into seventh.
Rienkerink lauded his charges for a valiant display as they fended off Pirates’ relentless pressure towards the end of the match, with City’s other stars of the show being goalkeeper Peter Leewenburgh and defender Tariq Fielies, who was crowned Man of the Match.
“There are two ways to look at this game. I think it was, for us, too bad that we played with 10 players,” Riekerink added. “We struggled a little bit in the beginning but then we slowly found spaces and we started playing football and I think we were then ready to play the [kind of] football we wanted to play, and the moment we started to do that I think we managed to play well with 10 men.
“From that moment you know you have to realise as a group that individuals cannot win the game only, groups can win games," he added. "They [players and staff] had to believe that we get out of this [five months without football] in just making a team and not individuals and that’s what you saw today.
"The team won this game by fighting more with a strong mind than the body and that’s almost the mirror of what we saw today. We had almost the biggest opportunities with Craig [Martin] and Kermit.”
