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Komphela backs his early substitution

Cape Town - Kaizer Chiefs head coach Steve Komphela believes that he made the right decision to replace Lorenzo Gordinho with Daniel Cardoso.

Amakhosi were dealt an early blow in the first-half when Eric Mathoho was shown a straight red card for a foul on SuperSport United striker Bradley Grobler.

Gordinho miss-timed his attempted clearance which saw the ball fall into the path of Grobler - Mathoho made up some ground on Grobler and put in a challenge from behind.

Komphela backed his call which brought stability to Amakhosi’s defence but they still suffered a 2-1 defeat.

"You can’t give up, there’s no way. In the game of football, you happen to get red cards and you have to deal with it, and I thought after the red card, second-half we did much, much better," Komphela said in his post-match interview with SuperSport TV.

"There was energy, you could see that, and I’m sure we had about two, three chances, could have been a draw but we lost it. Such a pity we lost 'Tower' far too early in the match, but you have to deal with it.

"These are setbacks that you get and you must deal with it, no option.

"In fact the decision we took looked crazy because you suffer a centre-back and you take out a centre-back. Somebody who would be sitting there would say: 'but this guy is crazy, what is he doing?' But in the end it came out to be the right decision,” said Komphela.

"The logic behind it - unfortunately in football you have to think while your head is still hot and there is no way you can be normal when the blood is hot and rushing to the head.

"Now the logic was that - if you compromise any of the offensive layers, let’s say you take out a Pule, Shabba or Parker, you are minimising your strength going forward.

"The mistake was that centrally we were not as tight but after bringing in Katsande it got quite tight and we had chances, which tells us that the decision we took was right,” added Komphela.

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