Cape Town City show promotion resolve with back-to-back wins

Cape Town City coach Andries Ulderink has praised his side’s resilience after they secured two victories in four days to strengthen their promotion challenge.

City followed a 3-1 win over the Bees at Athlone Stadium on Tuesday with a 3-2 victory against Gomora United at the Old Peter Mokaba Stadium on Friday.

Rai Vloet scored twice for City, while Gabriel Amato, 20, settled the contest with an 85th-minute winner. Tiklas Thutlwa scored both of Gomora’s goals, taking his season tally to eight.

“The determination of this team is amazing. It’s always difficult playing away games, especially with the heat. It’s never easy to play and win on a Tuesday and go away on Friday and win again,” Ulderink said.

The Dutch coach, who replaced Jan Vreman before the start of the season, admitted Gomora had the better of a significant spell during the match and said City benefited from some fortune.

“I think we started the game very well. We were defending really good in the first 25 minutes and we were also good on the ball, creating chances but after that Gomora were better than us for 20 minutes… playing better football,” Ulderink said.

“Luckily we still managed to score two goals during that moment where we were being dominated just before halftime, and that was good for us because I think we didn’t deserve the second goal, and then we conceded straight after halftime.

“And it was a difficult 10, 12 minutes after halftime, but after that we started controlling the game but couldn’t convert our chances until they got a penalty that made it 2-2.

“I am very happy about how the team responded to their second goal, throwing everything at them until we scored that great goal to win it 3-2.”

City have not lost since their season opener in August, when they went 2-1 down to Real Native. After seven rounds of fixtures, they are third in the Motsepe Foundation Championship (MFC), three points behind leaders Magesi.

The other results were: Hope 1-1 Midlands; Highbury 1-2 Lerumo; Venda 1-3 Magesi; Upington 2-0 Orbit; Bees 0-1 Native; AmaTuks 0-2 Lions; Leicesterford 0-1 NWU.