Nick Said, Special to ESPN 6y

McCarthy a rookie no more as pressure mounts

By his own admission Benni McCarthy's first season as a head coach at Cape Town City was a steep learning curve, but he is likely to find his second campaign even more pressurised as the grace he may have received as a rookie will now be gone.

McCarthy returned to work this week with City set to start their pre-season on Monday, later than most Absa Premiership clubs and just six weeks before the start of the new season.

The former Bafana Bafana striker led the club to fifth in the league last season, down from third the campaign before under Eric Tinkler, while they also appeared in the final of the MTN8, losing on penalties to SuperSport United.

It should be considered a decent finish for the club, with McCarthy's mandate being to secure a top eight spot, but in truth were only three points ahead of 11th-placed Bloemfontein Celtic and were on the right side of the fine margins between success and failure.

He has the full backing of club owner John Comitis, with the pair having a long relationship after it was Comitis' Cape Town Spurs that handed a 17-year-olf McCarthy his professional debut as a player.

But Comitis is also a hard taskmaster who expects success, and McCarthy will likely have to deliver better than fifth and perhaps even a piece of silverware this season to keep his boss happy.

He should be better equipped to do that though, having learned many lessons in his maiden campaign. Not necessarily around tactics or strategy, but more the man-management side of the game.  

"Dealing with players' personalities has been tough because you've got so many different kinds. The thing I found the hardest was that you cannot please everyone," he said.

"As much as you are trying to be nice with players, and as much as you are trying to satisfy them and make players happy and make them comfortable, at the end of the day you've got a squad of 26 and you can play only 11 of them.

"The 12th, the 13th, 14th, 15th man that you left out of the starting 11, is going to look at you like King Kong, just waiting for you to fail. Trying to keep everyone happy at the same time is impossible."

McCarthy admits that this willingness to try and accommodate players and keep his squad happy led to mistakes in team selection, ones he is not likely to repeat.

"At times you make mistakes because you try and do what you see but you can't see everything. Sometimes you let a player get away with not having the best of games for a while but he still finds himself in the starting line-up. Other players then aren't happy with that.

"Learning to manage that better and not to have players drifting away because they can't get in the team is something to really work on."

McCarthy feels he has grown as a coach in the last 12 months, which has included completing his UEFA Pro License, and that will hold him in good stead in the coming campaign.

"I will comeback one year wiser," he said. "I won't be a first-time coach. I will have had one year of learning experience and what it's like to manage a team.

"I'll have more experience. I will know how to deal with things better in the boardroom, I will know how to deal with things better in the dressing room, but everything this past season was a novelty to me."

City have made two signings so far, with the addition of Ivorian defender Kouassi Kouadja, essentially a replacement for last season's skipper Robyn Johannes, who has joined Bidvest Wits.

They have also added winger Riyaad Norodien from Orlando Pirates, but their biggest focus in the transfer window will be to find a regular goal-scorer.

McCarthy was left frustrated by the inability of his side to kill off games with wastefulness in front of goal, and only three sides, relegated Ajax Cape Town and Platinum Stars, as well as Bloemfontein Celtic, scored fewer than City's 26 goals in their 30 league games.

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