Cape Town City goalkeeper not about considering goals

by Mark Gleeson

Saturday Oct 19, 2019. 14:00

Cape Town City goalkeeper Peter Leeuwenburgh says he does not care that his club have conceded the most goals this season and says it comes with their attacking approach to the game.

City have kept only one clean sheet in nine league and cup games this season but the giant goalkeeper does not see this as an issue as his side take a seven-match winless streak into their first round tie at home to Kaizer Chiefs in the Telkom Knockout at the Cape Town Stadium on Saturday.

“Obviously it’s not nice,” he said of the run without success that stretches back to the narrow 1-0 win over new boys Stellenbosch on August 10, “but we play football to win games but it is not like we feel we are in a crisis, not at all.

“We train hard and actually we are very confident at the moment that if we keep working hard on the training round and improving our ourselves, we’ll get a win very shortly.”

“We are fine. Mistakes happen now and then. Maybe we’ve made a little too many but we are only human and I’m fully confident in the players in front of me.

“We’ve conceded the most goals in the league because of the way we play.

“We try to attack more than most so that leaves you a little vulnerable at the back sometimes.

“But that is a risk we take,” the 25-year-old Dutch-born ‘keeper said.

“I don’t care about numbers or clean sheets.

“When we concede the whole team is to blame, not just the goalkeeper or defence. It’s the same with scoring a goal … it’s not just the striker.

“We’ve already scored twice from a goal kick this season. It’s about the team; it’s not about me or the defenders.”

Leeuwenburg sees parallels between the City approach and that of Chiefs and feels that it offers his side a chance to gain revenge for their 2-1 league loss at Newlands in last August when Chiefs came back after conceding an early goal to take all three points.

“For me and for the whole team, it’s always nice to play against a team that likes to attack and have the ball and not just sit back and try to defend.

“That suits us. Hopefully it will be a nice game for ourselves and also for the people in the stands.

“Playing against Kaizer Chiefs at home doesn’t need any extra motivation and obviously we’ve looked back at the game at Newlands and we know what to take from the first half and we know what to improve on from the second half.

“That’s very obvious. The only thing we can do is try to start like we did at Newlands and continue doing that in the second half,” added Leeuwenburgh.