OPINION: Pirates’ Riveiro has credit in bank but Champions League gamble backfired

It’s way too early to start questioning the future of Orlando Pirates head coach Jose Riveiro. This is, after all, a man with plenty of credit in the bank on the back of his cup double with Orlando Pirates last season.

The Spanish head coach has built a strong side that has played some exhiliarating football at times and that also had a fantastic second-half of last season that propelled them to finish as runners-up in the DStv Premiership, on top of adding the Nedbank Cup to the MTN8 won earlier in the season.

The second-placed finish was enough to get Pirates into this season’s Caf Champions League, but this is where Riveiro appears to have, perhaps for the first time, fallen flat on his face at the helm of the club.

Pirates are out of the Champions League before the group stages have even begun and Riveiro has to take responsibility for fielding a weakened team in the first leg in Gaborone.

The fixture list was intense, so much so that Pirates played Mamelodi Sudnowns in the league just s few days later and Stellenbosch in the second-leg of an MTN8 semifinal a few days after that.

But not fielding a full-strength side was still a gamble, and it has backfired horribly. Pirates lost that game 1-0 in Gaborone, already putting them in a tricky position going into the match at Orlando last Friday.

They then lost to Sundowns, and to Stellenbosch, though they still managed to scrape through to the MTN8 final on the away goals rule. Riveiro might still have got away with his first-leg Champions League punt if Pirates had turned the tables on Jwaneng.

After all, there is plenty of time left in the race for the DStv Premiership, and Pirates will still be playing Sundowns in Saturday’s MTN8 final.

But now the Pirates head coach has a serious amount of egg dripping down his face after it was Morena Ramoreboli’s Galaxy who progressed to the Champions League group stages, beating Pirates in a penalty shoot-out.

Whatever planning Riveiro did ahead of this sequence of four games, it has proved a disaster-class. Having said that, we cannot simply dismiss all he has achieved at the club on the back of this.

The Pirates head coach must be given a chance to make amends, and there is no bigger chance to do that immediately than by winning the MTN8.

A strong riposte

If Pirates can defend their title, it will be an immediate, strong riposte to those calling for Riveiro’s head.

Sundowns will be favourites at the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban, Rulani Mokwena’s men giving another example of just how far they are ahead of the rest in South Africa as they eased into the Champions League group stages on Saturday.

This is a team that has also won all eight of their DStv Premiership games so far this season, and already look on course for a seventh straight league title. In a one off match, however, anything can happen, and this final could just be the game where the Buccaneers re-discover their scoring touch. For Riveiro’s sake, it kind of needs to be that game.