Orlando Pirates coach Abdeslam Ouaddou urges fans to come and fortress the Orlando Stadium next weekend to ensure a win for his men. Photo: Sipho Siso

news.reporter1959@gmail.com

Orlando Pirates’ turn of form in both the Betway Premiership, and the Caf Champions League has fans and certain media scribes eating humble pie after rubbishing the Moroccan coach Abdeslam Ouaddou.

This was after the coach lost two of his opening league games of the current season and the bombardment of insinuations of not being good enough for the Sea Robbers began to rain down. One of the football scribes even accused him of dismantling a well-oiled machine instead of carrying on with the momentum left by former coach Jose ‘Spanish Guitar’ Riveiro.

“You took over a well-oiled machine and you have dismantled the team functionality and rhythm, hence you are being thrashed left and right by even teams that we expected you to collect maximum points from. Would you consider yourself good enough for a big team like Orlando Pirates?” the scribe asked in a packed press conference of the MTN8 at the Premier Soccer League offices in Parktown, Johannesburg.

But the humble coach asked to be given more time as he was still trying various combinations with the arrival new signings from the off season and assured his critics to watch this space, for Pirates will bounce back, and bounce back they did.

The Mighty Buccaneers went to win its three follow up league games and has now carried that newly found form into the Caf Champions League preliminary opener against the Lesotho giants Lioli FC and won it by 3-0 at the Toyota Stadium in the Free State capital of Bloemfontein.

The Lesotho side was playing it home game in South Africa as Fifa and Caf have declared that country’s facilities as not compliant with their standards of requirements to host games under their jurisdiction. The next leg of the game will be at the fortress Orlando Stadium in Soweto the coming weekend.

The first half of the game had both teams slightly even though Pirates seemingly held a marginal advantage over its visitors, and the half ended with a goalless scoreline. But after the prep talk with coach Ouaddou, The Ghosts, as Pirates also known for their emblem of bones, spooked the visitors with a couple of fresh legs on the pitch and striker Tshogofatso Mabasa netted a brace in 53 rd and 56 th minutes of the game to put the Bucs 2-0 up in the second half.

Pirates’ forward Oswin Appollis, who was a thorn in the fresh of Lioli defenders from the word go, with his telling runs inside the box though his numerous attacks were thwarted, and he only managed to hammer the final nail the coffin of Lioli in the last minute of the referee’s optional time of three minutes, after which the Malawian referee and his two linesmen blew the final whistle of the game.

Lioli coach Bongani Maseko disputed and assertion from a TV sports journalist that Pirates ‘seemed too good’ for his side in the first half and said his men almost lost it in positional defence. “We still have another leg and who knows, maybe we can overcome them in that game as we were slightly even in ball possession though we couldn’t break their defence lines,” Maseko said.

Winning coach Ouaddou cautioned that his men might have had a good game ‘but the war is not over yet as we still have a second encounter with them next weekend’. “I am happy our substitutes did the job for us, but I would like to call on the fans to come in numbers to fortress the Orlando Stadium to motivate our players to kill the game in the final leg,” Ouaddou urged.