Cairo – Wearied Orlando Pirates return to South Africa on Tuesday after their valiant effort to conquer Africa again was thwarted by the continent’s best club side in Cairo on Sunday, and the Buccaneers now face a fresh challenge on the domestic front.
Bottom of the Absa Premiership with just three matches played, Roger de Sa’s team will have to play catch-up in the remaining weeks of this year, and early in the new year, to move up the standings after most of their games were put on hold due to their run in the African Champions League.
After Sunday’s failure inside a raucous Arab Contractors Stadium, where Al Ahly won 2-0 to claim the two-leg final 3-1 on aggregate, it may be difficult for De Sa and his technical team to lift their heads, but they were proud nonetheless.
“It’s hugely disappointing, to lose in the final, but coming second to Africa’s best side is no shame. If at the beginning of this tournament I was given the choice of losing to Ahly in a final away, I would have taken it,” De Sa said.
Several factors counted against Pirates on Sunday, including the absence of Andile Jali and Happy Jele through suspension, but the biggest factor must have been the fact that, for the first time in more than a year, a sellout crowd was allowed to watch a big game in the Egypt capital. A stampede which led to over 70 people dying at the Cairo International Stadium last year had forced Egypt’s rulers to ban crowds at stadiums, with matches played behind closed doors. But Ahly’s request that Sunday’s final be open to the public proved key in the end, with De Sa acknowledging nerves had played a part in Pirates losing. “The crowd was a factor, no question about it. Every time their players got the ball, the crowd got behind them.”
When Pirates beat Ahly 3-0 in El Gouna in August, it was before empty stands, and the experience of Sunday, with 35 000 fans singing non-stop, lighting fire crackers and flares, will have been chastening for some of the Bucs players, although they handled the situation well enough to fashion chances of their own.
Such experience, De Sa said, should prove invaluable in the months ahead, and Pirates – exhausted as they must be following a 16-match Champions League run that concluded on Sunday – should be able to cope while playing catch-up on the domestic front.
“We are bottom of the (Premiership) standings and we need to pick ourselves up.
“Obviously the heads are down, but we take big lessons from this campaign. We’ve proven that South African teams can achieve. It can be done. We have to make sure that next time, we don’t waste scoring chances.”
With this being an international week, Pirates will have a welcome rest, but nine of their players have to report for national duty for Bafana Bafana’s friendly against Swaziland on Friday. The domestic programme kicks off next Saturday for Bucs, when they travel to SuperSport United in the semi-final of the Telkom Knockout.
Having received an unbelievable send-off to Cairo at the OR Tambo International last week, the mood is likely to be sombre upon Bucs’ return this morning, but South Africans should still glow at one of their teams making the Champions League final – only the third time since 1995 and first since 2001.
“I know we are country of winners but I really hope we have not let too many people down. Believe me, the guys tried their best. For some of them, this was a first-time experience because they had never played at a national level. We can only get better from here,” De Sa said.
The Star