Orlando Pirates head coach Jose Riveiro has reacted to Orlando Pirates shock exit from the CAF Champions League ahead of the group stages.
The Buccaneers did overturn their 1-0 first-leg defeat in the second preliminary round over Morena Ramoreboli’s Jwaneng Galaxy but lost 5-4 on penalties.
While Jwaneng scored all their spot-kicks, Relobohile Mofokeng missed for the Buccaneers, ending their hopes of returning to Africa’s elite club competition.
“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,” Riveiro 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.”
Pirates now turn their attention to the MTN8 final next week against league champions Mamelodi Sundowns.
