TCC Cup: Remo Stars Suffer Rare Defeat In TCC Cup Final, Praises The Officiating Of The Game

“Today we lost the final, we’re not happy but in the spirit of sportsmanship we say congratulations to Gbagada FC for the fight, we had moments we could have won the game but we didn’t take our chances, we were sloppy in defense in the moments that cost us the game and they won because they took their chances while we paid for ours,” coach of Remo Stars U19 Ajibolade Olumide told Sports247 after his team’s narrow loss in the TCC Cup final on Sunday.

The coach however praises the officiating of the game as the referee did a good job in his opinion. “The officiating was fair enough. It’s difficult to satisfy both parties as we have different views on the game but they did a fair enough job,” Olumide said.

“There is no consolation, there’s always an opportunity to learn and you learn more in defeat than you do in success,” the coach said as regards motivating his players to do more next time. “Tactically, they had a game plan, one v one marking and it was very difficult to get the space. Later we got into the game but we conceded due to a small mistake so we lost the game not because they had a better plan, but because we made a mistake of our own but congratulations to them,” he added.

The coach also stuck with his player despite the missed penalty saying the lad had scored more than 5 penalties this season for the club and this miss was a one-off so he won’t be putting him on the spot as that’s football.

“There is no pressure for us. The pressure is how we can move from here to next season, picking the players psychologically, making sure that the players do not dwell on the defeat but pick the lessons from it,” Olumide said.

“We will continue to try to develop our players. We had 5 of them promoted to the first team before the end of the season which shows progress for us. In the summer, some of them will be heading to Europe and so at the end of the day, the objective for us is this progression and not winning every match,” coach Ajibolade Olumide said as regards plans for next season.