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Cape Town - Franklin Cale and Abbubakar Mobara each missed a penalty as Sporting Lisbon defeated Ajax Cape Town 4-2 on penalties to advance to the final of the Cape Town Cup following a 2-2 draw over 90 minutes in an entertaining clash at Cape Town Stadium on Friday evening.
Lisbon will meet Crystal Palace who beat Supersport United 4-0 in the first semi-final match played earlier on Friday.
Ajax Cape Town looked the better of the two teams in the opening exchanges of the match with Riyaard Norodien very instrumental down the flanks.
The battle looked to be in the midfield in the first ten minutes before the match opened up with end to end action as the two teams searched for the opening goal of the evening.
Lisbon began to win the midfield battle and dominated possession and were rewarded with a goal in the 19th minute.
Carlos Mane connected with a good ball from Jefferson Nascimento, to put Lisbon ahead.
Ajax had a chance to hit back in the 28th minute through Bantu Mzwakali, who was played in by a good pass from Granwald Scott, but the Ajax forward’s effort was saved by the brilliant Rui Patricio in goals for Sporting.
Both teams wereplaying attacking football and Sporting nearly doubled the score in the 30th minute only for Slimani to balloon the ball over the cross bar after the good work once again by Jefferson down the left flank.
Ajax goalkeeper, Annsi Jaakkola, came to the rescue for his team in the 34th minute as he denied an unmarked Slimani to keep the score-line at 1-0 in favour of Sporting.
Impressive Norodien also had a chance to bring his team back into the match, but Patricio once again came to the rescue for his team.
It was end to end action as the second half kick-off with several changes from both benches.
Norodien continued to test Lisbon with his explosive runs, but finishing seemed to be the problem for Ajax, who continued to create good goal scoring chances.
Mzwakali, who was the star man for Ajax in the recent Charity Showdown tournament, should have scored the equalizer for Urban Warriors in the 62nd minute, but he ballooned the ball over the net with the goalkeeper already beaten following a good pass played by Ruzaigh Gamildien.
Against the run of play, Ajax won a penalty after Musa Lebusa was brought down
in the penalty box. Cecil Lolo stepped up to the spot and comfortably beat
Patricio to tie the match at 1-1.
Substitute, Franklin Cale then stunned Lisbon with a well taken goal in the
79th minute.
However, the celebrations were cut short as another substitute, Ruben Sebedo netted the equalizer for Lisbon in the dying minutes of the match.
The match ended at 2-2 and had to be settled in penalty kicks where Lisbon won 4-2.
