Melbourne Victory head coach Kevin Muscat was proud of Elvis Kamsoba after the attacker’s Hyundai A-League debut on Wednesday.
Kamsoba produced a lively performance during Victory’s 2-0 loss to Adelaide United at Coopers Stadium.
The 22-year-old initially arrived in Adelaide in 2008 from a Tanzanian refugee camp, having fled war-torn Burundi.
Speaking at a post-match news conference, Muscat discussed the attacker and his team’s performance after its nine-match unbeaten run was ended.
On Kamsoba’s debut…
“I’d be taking too much credit if I’m telling you I allowed sentiment to give him his debut here in Adelaide. That only came into my thinking as an afterthought. He’s earnt the opportunity, it’s just as simple as that. It’s a great story, an unbelievable story, and I was really proud of him. He performed immensely. He gave everything and he’s waited a long time for this opportunity. He’s been training with us for quite some time, obviously without being able to register him until the 3rd of January, when the window opened. He played one youth team game last week and he’s just been showing and showing in his eagerness and willingness to learn that he was really desperate for an opportunity and that’s what we need from every player, that’s the type of attitude we need from everybody. I was really proud of him and pleased for him and his family that it happened to be here in Adelaide and we’ll move onto the next game now.”
on whether his team was nervous…
“I don’t know if nerves is the right word, but I probably haven’t got another word to give you. You come here and we’ve really given ourselves too much to do and if I’m really honest, it’s probably been creeping in in recent weeks, early on in games. To concede a couple of goals in 20-odd minutes, the first one – I only speak from our perspective because from Adelaide’s perspective it’s a good goal – but it can be very, very easily defended the first goal and the second one is an error that happens from time to time that you want to eradicate because it gives us a hell of a lot to do.”
on his side’s starts…
“We’ve discussed we’ve been maybe not starting the games how we want to, but having said that, I thought, if we want to timescale the first 5-10 minutes, everything was OK. To concede in the manner that we did, with really not enough urgency and then for the second one to follow so quickly, it gives you a mountain to climb. Having said that, it’s our first loss since October so the boys have been on a fantastic run, fantastic performances and earning some results. Tonight, it wasn’t to be. I thought in the second half was more like a performance we were expecting, we created a number of chances and not only the chances. I can sit here and claim we had X amount of possession and X amount of shots that somehow is meant to justify that we should’ve got more out of the game, the reality is we get what we deserve tonight, but we did work really hard in the second half and played some good stuff and it wasn’t enough on the night.”
