Pirates can salvage season

Pirates can salvage season

The extended DStv Premiership, as well as Saturday’s Nedbank Cup final, means that fans are in for a great week of football, and with two TAB Soccer 13 pools expected to reach a combined R34 million, bettors have everything to play for.

By Mark Gleeson

Orlando Pirates must put the disappointment of their narrow African Confederation Cup defeat behind them. They can still salvage their season by winning their last three games and finishing their league campaign runners-up to Mamelodi Sundowns.

If so, they will claim a place in the African Champions League after being denied African cup glory on Friday night in a penalty shootout loss to Renaissance Berkane of Morocco in Nigeria.

Pirates deserved to win the game, but their lack of a proven goal getter again let them down. Co-coaches Fadlu Davids and Mandla Ncikazi will have to come up with an alternative option in attack if they are to finish the season in winning style.

Pirates’ run to the Confederation Cup final meant they had to postpone three league matches and extend the season. They host Maritzburg United tonight, then take on Royal AM on Friday in Durban and SuperSport United in Atteridgeville next Monday.

Pirates are in seventh place, but three wins would catapult them from 40 points to 49 and if they can add four goals to their current positive goal difference of plus five, they would narrowly pip Cape Town City, who sit second despite losing their last league game at Stellenbosch.

Royal AM are also still in the mix, making Friday’s meeting at the Chatsworth Stadium like another cup final for the travel-weary Buccaneers.

The DStv Premiership season was scheduled to end, as is tradition, with a grand finale on Saturday as all the clubs were to have completed their programme simultaneously. Not only did Pirates derail the plans, but the rainy Durban weather at the weekend added to the list of postponements.

It means that the build-up to Saturday’s Nedbank Cup final at the Royal Bafokeng Sports Palace is also overshadowed. There, Sundowns will be strong favourites to complete the league and cup double at the expense of Marumo Gallants, who were last season’s cup winners.

For all of their record-breaking success, Sundowns have only twice before achieved the league and cup double – in 1998 and 2020.

Instead, it is Kaizer Chiefs who hold the record for the most double triumphs in South African football with a total of six.

It is a reminder to the club’s trophy-starved followers of a much more successful past.

AmaKhosi’s last was in 2013, ironically under coach Stuart Baxter, who was recently fired.

Sundowns’ first double was in 1998, when they won the league by five points from Chiefs and beat Pirates on post-match penalties in a replay in the BOB Save Super Bowl final. Their second was in a ‘bio bubble’ amid the COVID19 pandemic in 2020.