Amakhosi will come into Saturday’s much-anticipated clash against arch rivals Orlando Pirates boasting confidence aplenty, after seeing out a 2-1 win over the African champions on Tuesday evening.
While Komphela was evidently delighted with the way his side performed and bounced back from their defeat to Baroka prior to the international break, the astute manager showed grace and elegance as he guarded against the possibility of over-confidence at the FNB Stadium come 15h30 on Saturday.
“There’s a fine line between arrogance and confidence – we need to stay confident without being too arrogant,” warned Komphela at the pre-match media briefing on Thursday.
“It was a nice confidence boost winning a match, but again, we said it when we went to Baroka – they wanted it more and they got it. When we went to Sundowns, we wanted it more and we got it.
“We’ll go to Pirates and we need to have the same feeling, because if you think otherwise then you’ll have problems, and we don’t want to go through problems.
“For that matter, with Derbies there are no favourites. There’s a tendency of people coming to the Derby on the back of not doing well and they pull a surprise. We just have to focus on the match on Saturday.”
With the two sides heading into the mammoth encounter on the back of contrasting midweek results, Komphela further stressed the need to balance the players’ mindsets, while admitting that the Buccaneers have a slight advantage in that they could come with a spirit of resurgence.
"Football is about energy. You have to read the [players’] energy – if they’re getting too cocky then bring them down to earth. If they’re getting too anxious then calm them down. There are certain things that, as a coach, you don’t go to school for but you find yourself in it,” he explained.
“There’s a stage where you shake a player’s hand and you feel, ‘But no, he doesn’t have confidence,’ so you need to then find out what happened. If you look into a player's eyes and you can see 'this guy is not steady’ or ‘he’s too confident,’ those are all dynamics you need to manage.
“Generally, I’d say a win on Tuesday, facing Saturday’s match, must not give us the God-given birthright that we must just go through the match, but we need to be careful and go through the match. In as much as Pirates played a draw yesterday [Wednesday], that to me is much better for them because they’ll be coming to say, ‘Hey, we need to rectify this’. So we cannot afford to be complacent.”