A crestfallen Orlando Pirates head coach, Jose Riveiro has said that the outcome of their clash against Jwaneng Gaxaxy is ‘unacceptable.
The Soweto giants were surprisingly knocked out of the CAF Champions League by the Botswana side, Galaxy, on Friday night at Orlando Stadium.
Pirates won the return leg 1-0, having lost with the same scoreline two legs ago in Botswana. That meant that the tie had to be decided on penalties as it ended 1-1 on aggregate.
Galaxy emerged as 5-2 winners in the shootout, much to the delight of South African-born coach Morena Ramoreboli, who couldn’t hide his excitement after the game.
Ramorebodi and his Galaxy side are through to the CAF Champions League group stages. After the disappointing result, a dejected Jose Riveiro struggled to explain what went wrong in Soweto but believes his troops performed well enough to earn a spot in the group stages of the continental competition.
PIRATES COACH REACTS TO SHOCK CHAMPIONS LEAGUE EXIT
“There’s not much to decode here about the game,” he said. “It’s a difficult game to explain from the scoring perspective.
The guys’ performance was more than enough to drive us to the group stage. “But for reasons that are 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.
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It’s part of the game, something we need to do better and dominate. “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.”