Cape Town City coach Benni McCarthy says his manne must toughen up after his injury crisis deepened this weekend.
Heading into Sunday’s MTN8 quarterfinal at Maritzburg United, Benni was sweating on the fitness of Kwanda Mngonyama, Edmilson Dove, Ebrahim Seedat and Teko Modise.
And by the time City had sneaked into the semifinal with a 1-0 win, skipper Thami Mkhize was in hospital with a head knock and striker Siphelele Mthembu was also forced off with injury.
Benni’s players were kicked all around the pitch as Maritzburg went in hard with Thabo Nodado and Riyaad Norodien in the wars.
At one point, City were down to 10 men with Norodien being treated on the sidelines and all their substitutes used up.
But instead of asking for more protection for his players, he wants his manne to man up.
Benni says: “My players must stop being like little babies.
“In matching Maritzburg’s physicality, we fell a bit short. But that’s the name of the game. It’s a contact sport and our players have to learn to be a bit more physically prepared for these.
“And that’s why it’s so important that we need to do gym work - I know people say gym work don’t go with football, but today you saw. So that’s my recovery session, send my players to the gym. Because we don’t wanna go through that stress.
“If Norodien couldn’t have made it back on, we would have been a man short and then it would have been lights for us.”