Orlando Pirates head coach Jose Riveiro says there is no use complaining about the schedule if one’s club is competitive and the game evolving.
Pirates have had a busy 2024/25 season competing on all fronts. They have already won the MTN8, sit second on the Betway Premiership table with 12 points from top-placed Mamelodi Sundowns with three matches in hand. Pirates have also qualified for the semi-finals of the CAF Champions league while playing in the semi-final of the Nedbank Cup on Sunday.
The Ke Yona last four clash against Marumo Gallants come a few days after their triumph in Africa in midweek with the coach admitting that himself, staff and players are tired but will do everything in their power even fatigued.
“Well obviously we don’t work the way that we would like to do as coaches, as a coaching staff anymore due to the schedules,” said Riveiro.
“I’m sitting here after a terrible game yesterday, in terms of energy, emotions you can imagine and just few hours later, we are sitting here again, talking about the next one.
“So, there’s no time for training or good preparations anymore. It’s about just to make sure that the players are ready to go again and us also we need a certain time to recover from the games, emotionally, cognitive in order to do again sit down, analyse, besides the way we want to face this new challenge.
“We try to take care of ourselves as good as we can, even though we as coaches, we are not running 12 kilometres there on the field.
“You can imagine that the levels of energy are not high every day, so it’s our responsibility to find a way we are tired. We have to do it tired. There’re no excuses. And like I said already many times, the fact that we playing a lot of games is a good news for us. It’s a very good news is a consequence of being competitive and being that word that you like a lot consistent, you’re not repeating anymore recently.
“We have to deal with it, is the consequence of being in a competitive team, in a competitive club and we never complain about that because there’s nothing you can do.
“Football is going in this direction, it’s not going to change and it’s us the ones who we need to adapt ourselves to the circumstances to try to be competitive no matter what.”
