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Football Betway Premiership CAF Champions League Orlando Pirates

Riveiro Hails ‘Bunch Of Winners’ 

  • September 23, 2024
  • 3 min read
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Riveiro Hails ‘Bunch Of Winners’ 

Orlando Pirates coach Jose Riveiro has heaped praise on his charges after booking their spot in the group stages of the CAF Champions League, meeting an objective set at the beginning of the season.

The Buccaneers will rub shoulders with the continent’s best in the mini-league phase for the first time since the 2018/19 campaign. 

This comes after Riveiro’s men avenged their early exit of last season with a 3-0 aggregate win over Jwaneng Galaxy. The Spanish mentor has expressed his satisfaction with his team’s solid performance throughout the preliminary rounds of the continental competition, while he acknowledges that competing in the group stages will be a new experience for his youthful squad. 

“We have a very young team,” said Riveiro. 

“For most of these young players, it’s the first time they will play in the group stages of the Champions League, it’s also the first time for me to qualify the team for the Champions League. 

“We’re really satisfied with our performances [in the preliminary rounds], four games, four clean sheets. We also scored a good number of goals in these four games so I’m happy with the team’s overall performance.” 

While he prefers his troops to be dominant in their matches, Riveiro is pleased with his side’s newfound ability and tenacity to grind out results even when they are not at their best on the day, compared to the previous seasons. 

“It was not a beautiful game on Saturday, where we can say Pirates created a lot of chances, ” Riveiro noted. 

“No, it was not that type of a game, I think it was a professional performance, but we got the results that we wanted. Sometimes football is like this, I’m happy to see the team growing in this direction.”

The Bucs mentor has backed his charges to go all the way in Africa’s elite club competition, stating that he has a bunch of winners in his squad, with a continued hunger to keep winning as they look to gain continental experience. 

“We have a group of young and talented players, a bunch of winners, ” Riveiro said. “They want to continue improving and winning, and again having the continuity to play in this type of a tournament. It is an interesting tournament against quality opponents and tough games. 

“So, every pinch of experience will come. The talent is there, and the quality is there, we only need to keep going and accumulate experiences together and the future will be fine.”

The Soweto giants will learn their fate next month, with both the CAF Champions League and CAF Confederations Cup group stage draws set to take place on 7 October in Cairo. 

In the meantime, Pirates will host form Polokwane City at Orlando Stadium on Tuesday afternoon (15h00) in the Betway Premiership.

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Hlayisani Magoro

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