Blame me and not the players — Badela
The Gqeberha side endured their first league loss of the season after Joslin Kamatuka of City netted a late second-half goal, which sank the Chilli Boys.
The Wednesday night fixture, which took place at the Chatsworth Stadium in Durban, was Chippa's first away match for the season.
Chippa opened their league campaign with a 1-1 draw against defending champions Mamelodi Sundowns at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium.
After Wednesday night's showdown, Badela was asked about his players' performance against Durban City compared with how they played against Sundowns.
The Chilli Boys were reportedly aggressive against the Brazilians but less so against City.
'No, I wouldn't blame the players, it's the coach [who should be blamed],' Badela said.
'That performance against Sundowns, it's the players, they did well. This performance today is not good enough, so it's the coach.
'I have to look at myself first, before I blame the players.
'I have to look at myself, if the preparation was good enough, did we give the players confidence for them to play, did we give the players enough tools and preparation for this game.
'So, before we go to the players, we have to start with me. So, I have to first look at myself, and from there, we will review the performance. We'll take it from there.'
The former Sundowns youth coach had warned his players that playing against Durban City would not be a walk in the park.
'We knew it was going to be a difficult game against a strong team.
'I warned my players that this Durban City team is not an easy team to play against. We watched a few of their games.
'They are a hard-running team, they load your box, they are physical. So we could not match the physicality, and they created better chances than us.
'I don't think we deserve anything in this game, but I cannot blame the players. I will take this loss on me.
'I think maybe I could have done better with the team that I chose, because we came from a very difficult game, and you could see in the last 15 minutes, we started to run out of legs, and they pinned us in our half.
'We could not get out of our half, and the solution that we chose was to go long, which is not always the solution, because the quicker the ball goes forward is the quicker it comes back.
'Eventually, they got that chance in the second half, I think it was the only chance that they had in the second half, and they punished us and we lost 1-0.'
Badela said they would now prepare for their next league match against TS Galaxy at the Buffalo City Stadium on Tuesday night (7.30pm).
The Herald
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