Pirates coach Riveiro says job not finished against Jwaneng

Orlando Pirates are one step away from realising one of their targets this season, which is to reach the group stage of the CAF Champions League.

This after the Buccaneers conquered Jwaneng Galaxy away in Gaborone to take back a healthy lead to the second leg at Orlando Stadium on Saturday. Goals from Tshegofatso Mabasa and Deon Hotto were enough to give Pirates a 2-0 at the National Stadium this past weekend.

Orlando Pirates coach Jose Riveiro, however, has warned his charges that the tie against Jwaneng Galaxy is not over.

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“We managed to get a good result, but it’s not over, there’s still another 90 minutes to play,” said the Spaniard.

“It’s not over. Like I said, it’s the first half of this round. We still have to play another 90 minutes in Orlando and in between that, we still have to play our first league game against Chippa United (on Wednesday), so we’re going to celebrate this victory for a few hours and tomorrow we focus on Chippa. Only after the Chippa game, we will turn our attention back to Jwaneng. For now, we’re not thinking about the lead, we’re playing at home and we must win our games at home,” he added.

How Pirates learned from Jwaneng defeat

Riveiro admitted that Pirates were hurt after they were dumped out of the CAF Champions League at the same stage by Jwaneng last season.

“I would be lying if I said we were not hurt about what happened last season because we wanted to go through to the group stages. And the reason why (we didn’t go through), it’s because Jwaneng were better than us. But we learned some lessons (from the Jwaneng defeat) last season because after we got eliminated we managed to beat (Mamelodi) Sundowns in the MTN8 final.

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“A year later we’re back here against the same opponents and it’s easy to say now, with the result on our side, that we did well. I think we need not be happy with only the results, we must be happy with how the boys competed against a proper team, a difficult side in difficult circumstances.”

The second leg of this CAF Champions League second preliminary round tie is set for Orlando Stadium on Saturday at 6 pm.