Orlando Pirates coach Jose Riveiro has offered detail in what he believes defines the mental capacity needed in the CAF Champions League.
Pirates will be the hosts for the second leg of this CAF Champions League quarterfinal, having won 1-0 last week on Tuesday in Algiers.
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Riveiro has guided Bucs to being the only unbeaten club still in the competition having already come back with wins in Cairo and Algiers.
“It tells a lot about the team’s capacity to compete being able to go through all those difficult moments,” says Riveiro when asked about the psychological capacity of his team.
“This competition is not about making it beautiful, it is about to win.
“It is about to dig deep in each and every phase of the game and to be better than the opponent during the three, four, five different scenarios that you have to play during the 90 minutes.
“You have to understand that right now we are talking about the quarterfinals of the Champions League and the eight best teams on the continent.
“So, you have to accept that there are going to be moments when they dominate.
“They are going to submit you sometimes and you have to be better than them in that moment.
“So, I think in those games, especially the away ones, we went through those phases many times and the team is confident because we know we are capable to be good in those moments of the game.
“That is why we are in the last stages of the competition.
“But again, tomorrow is a different story.
“Even though our journey was excellent so far, you have a bad day in this competition and then you are out.
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“All the games that you played before and how good you were don’t matter because it will only be good as a memory in the future.
“But then those games will give us reason to believe tomorrow even when we are going through those periods.
“Tomorrow there will be moments when we have to suffer and we know that we are capable of doing it and survive at the end of the day,” says Riveiro.
