Orlando Pirates coach Jose Riveiro has opened up on dealing with a busy schedule for his side this season.
A packed 2024/25 schedule sees Pirates competing on multiple fronts. They've won the MTN8, are second in the Betway Premiership, reached the CAF Champions League semi-finals, and now play Marumo Gallants in the Nedbank Cup semi-final.
Acknowledging player fatigue after their midweek CAF victory, the coach has committed to giving their all.
‘THERE’S NO TIME FOR TRAINING’
“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.”
