Orlando Pirates head coach Abdeslam Ouaddou has reacted to Tshegofatso Mabasa’s 50th goal milestone at the club saying he is pleased for a player with great human qualities.
The 29-year-old brought his all-time scoring tally to half a century of goals with the winner in Pirates’ 2-0 victory over TS Galaxy in the Betway Premiership on Tuesday night. The result that saw Ouaddou’s charges move up to third place on the log with 15 points in seven outings. Mabasa who was a second half substitute was also hailed for the nudge he gave fellow forward Evidence Makgopa to take the penalty which broke the deadlock against Galaxy.
Ouaddou said he is pleased for his striker and that he is not surprised the latter backed Makgopa to take the spot kick because it is in his nature to put others ahead of himself.
“First of all, I’m happy for him,” said Ouaddou.
“I’m a very happy coach that Mabasa scored. It shows a fantastic team spirit of this player. Like I said in the beginning of the season, he was not playing, but you can see that he was involved 100% in training, very professional all the time, advising his teammates, close to them, very clean heart.
“And it’s not the first time if I can go a little bit deep, I can even tell you that one time I wanted to bring him on the pitch 15 minutes in the game and he told me, please Coach can you bring Masindi [Nemtajela] on the game. So, he was pushing to make a teammate play instead of him. So, I’m not surprised about what you said. Yes, he was pushing to help his teammate because Makgopa deserved to score because he did a fantastic job today and in previous games as well.
“So yeah, you know that for a striker to score it’s very important and he knows that it’s very important that he was pushing.
“Nice, fantastic spirit for Mabasa and all the players I’m very happy about that.”
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