Pirates coach criticises defensive Arrows

by Graeme Jackson

Wednesday Nov 22, 2017. 11:00

Orlando Pirates coach Milutin Sredojevic has taken a swipe at Golden Arrows’ defensive approach after the teams played to a goalless draw in their Absa Premiership match last night.

The teams were locked at 0-0 at the match at Orlando Stadium, with ‘Micho’ accusing Arrows and counterpart Clinton Larsen of taking the “easy” approach by playing defensively and looking to hit on the counter attack.

“In a game of football, there are two things — one hard and one easy: It is very easy to park the bus, to defend and to counter-attack. It is very hard to attack and close the counter-attacks. We really tried from the onset to play very much attacking. However, we could not find a way to convert what we have created,” explained the Bucs coach when speaking to SuperSport TV cameras.

"It’s very unfortunate, I believe, that every single player has given his not 100, [but] 200 percent. Unfortunately, they didn’t get rewarded. However, we need to continue working, to continue keeping clean sheets, to continue having domination in the game the way we had domination almost throughout the game - and I believe that possession was very much in our favour."

Sredojevic added that his side’s poor finishing is a problem faced by all of South African football: "This is why Bafana is not going to the World Cup. This is why we are not getting what we deserve from performances. But in a way, we just need to keep working on it and I believe in one moment we shall break through and find the way for that scoring problem."