Sunshine Stars coach Olugbenga Ogunbote told CAFONLINE.COM in a post match interview that his side will rise above their 2-0 defeat to Esperance and mount a renewed challenge in the Orange CAF Champions League campaign.

CAFONLINE.COM:What is your assessment of the match?

GBENGA:It was a difficult game, playing against the defending champions is not easy. It is unfortunate that we lost this game being the very first game of the group stage. I won't blame my players but we respected our opponents too much in the first half and that cost us a lot.

CAFONLINE.COM: First game first defeat, how do you intend to turn this around to ensure qualification from this group?

GBENGA:We will recover from this set back and step up our game. Like I said earlier we had too much respect for them in the first half. We can go there (Tunisia)and defeat them on their ground just as they did to us today. We have other teams in the group to play and hopefully we will win matches from these.

CAFONLINE.COM:What are your chances in this group now that you have lost your first match at home?

GBENGA:We still have hope. It's too early to write us off. We have to buckle up and rise above this defeat and aim to get an away victory. The mini-league stage has just started and there is still plenty football to play.

CAFONLINE.COM:What did you tell your boys during the break after going down 2-0 in the first half?

GBENGA: I told them we were showing too much respect to the opponents and this was affecting our game plan. I encouraged them to go all out and turn the game around and you could see how different we played in the second half. It wasn't that our tactics was wrong but we missed too many chances in the second half.I think we lost the match in the first half.