Orlando Pirates crashed out of the 2023/24 CAF Champions League after a dramatic penalty shootout against Jwaneng Galaxy on Friday night.
Unfortunately for the Buccaneers, penalties were lost 5-4, with youngster Relebohile Mofokeng having had his attempt saved by the goalkeeper.
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The loss means the CAF Champions League journey comes to an abrupt halt for Orlando Pirates, at the preliminary round stage.
After the match, dramatic scenes saw a tearful Patrick Maswanganyi being consoled by Olisa Ndah as Pirates took stock of the unfortunate result.
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You can see the emotional video after the Pirates defeat below:
‘AN UNACCEPTABLE, DIFFICULT DAY’
After conceding a 1-0 lead in the tie on their trip to Gaborone, the Soweto Giants had been on a mission to avoid an early exit with a spot in the group stage of the competition up for grabs on the night.
“There’s not much to decode here about the game, it’s a difficult game to explain from the scoring perspective, the guys’ performance tonight was more than enough to drive us to the group stages,” coach Jose Riveiro said, as quoted by iDiski Times.
“But for reasons that’s still difficult to explain at this moment straight after the game, we couldn’t make it in the 90 minutes and then in the penalties, everything can happen. It’s part of the game, something we need to do better and dominate.
“We couldn’t. We started with a 1-0 disadvantage but I think, I don’t know… it’s difficult to explain how we scored one goal in for games and the way we did it today was an ugly goal.
“A difficult day, not acceptable, this team is built and prepared to go to the Champions League group stage, so we can’t accept this result and say we’re unlucky, nobody feels proud of the result and that the fact we’re not going to the group stages.
“We have to accept it, analyse it and take responsibility [for it], the coach more than anybody else and we need to do a proper reflection about our participation in this competition because obviously, it wasn’t good enough.”
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