Riveiro admits to 'difficult day' for Pirates

by Staff Reporter

Saturday Sep 30, 2023. 12:35

Orlando Pirates head coach Jose Riveiro insists their performance was not good enough against Jwaneng Galaxy over both legs, as they crashed out of the CAF Champions League on Friday night.

The Buccaneers had lost the first leg of their second-round tie 1-0 in Gaborone a fortnight ago, but they were expected to get the job done at the Orlando Stadium to advance to the group stages.

That was not the case, though, as the Botswana Premier League champions knocked them out of Africa’s elite club competition on penalties (5-4) after Evidence Makgopa had opened the scoring in the 66th minute to level matters.

Relobohile Mofokeng crucially missed from the spot for Pirates to end their African hopes before it began and Riveiro was left scratching his head at his side’s struggles in front of goal after they scored just once in their last four games in all competitions.

“There’s not much to decode here about the game, it’s a difficult game to explain from the scoring perspective, the guys’ performance tonight was more than enough to drive us to the group stages,” the Spanish tactician said.

“But for reasons that’s still difficult to explain at this moment straight after the game, we couldn’t make it in the 90 minutes and then in the penalties, everything can happen. It’s part of the game, something we need to do better and dominate.

“We couldn’t. We started with a 1-0 disadvantage but I think, I don’t know… it’s difficult to explain how we scored one goal in for games and the way we did it today was an ugly goal.

“A difficult day, not acceptable, this team is built and prepared to go to the Champions League group stage, so we can’t accept this result and say we’re unlucky, nobody feels proud of the result and that the fact we’re not going to the group stages.

“We have to accept it, analyse it and take responsibility [for it], the coach more than anybody else and we need to do a proper reflection about our participation in this competition because obviously, it wasn’t good enough.”