Orlando Pirates head coach Jose Riveiro has warned that knockout games “are always complicated” and his side cannot take reaching the next round in the CAF Champions League for granted.
Pirates beat Djabal Club 1-0 in the first leg in Comoros thanks to a late goal by Zakhele Lepasa last weekend, entering the second leg at home with a one-goal advantage.
If they would progress to the second preliminary round, Pirates will likely face Morena Ramoreboli’s Jwaneng Galaxy after they beat Vipers 2-0 in the first leg at home.
However, Riveiro insisted they are only planning for the next game, and are targeting another win instead of playing for a draw.
“Knockout games over two legs are always complicated for everyone, for the big fish, for the small fish – for different reasons,” he said on Thursday.
“So we try to take it serious. What we want is to win every game. I’m happy that we managed to get a good result, not because we face the second one in advantage, because we won.
“And because we managed to win our first game away. It doesn’t matter whether it’s in Comoros or Cape Town, we managed to get our first victory away, which is important for us, for our mentality.
“Now we have to go to the game the same way, it’s 0-0, we want to win the game, we don’t want to play for draws. We’re not thinking only about going to the next round, we want to perform, we want to prepare for the next game as well. We want to keep growing as a group.
“The result, it was 1-0, we scored in the last minutes of the game but we could easily have done it before. We’ve had several chances in the first part of the first half, we had chances in the second half even more clear.
“The result is one thing but the performance is a different thing.”
Pirates welcome Djabal Club at Orlando Stadium at 19:30 at Orlando Stadium on Friday.
