Orlando Pirates head coach Jose Riveiro has explained why he opted to give Thembinkosi Lorch his first start of the season, and also why he let the winger play the whole 90 minutes.
Lorch, 30, made his first appearance of the 2023/24 season, and immediately walked away with the Man of the Match award in the Buccaneers’ 2-0 win over Cape Town Spurs.
Riveiro said before the match that Lorch was among a couple players alongside Evidence Makgopa, who have shown good performances in training to earn a starting berth.
“I think he’s in a good moment and his contribution is always very welcome to the team,” he told SuperSport TV.
“So I’m hoping to see a good match in general, everybody is motivated, understanding that this is like final and we want to perform in our best today.”
After the match, Riveiro explained that the early first-half substitution and Lorch’s overall fitness resulted in the winger playing the full 90 minutes on his return.
“We have an accident in the first half, we have to use one spot with Sipho so we were a bit short in the end,” he stated.
“So I spoke with Lorch in the last minutes, he said he was fine. Obviously it’s normal after a long period to have some cramps in the game.
“Lorch is a player sometimes we don’t we are not conscience about how much he runs in the game, how many times he runs into the space and in the end of the game he played the bill a bit but you can see that he’s in a good space, he’s fit and he could manage to finish the game anyway.”
Pirates followed TS Galaxy into the quarter-finals and will find out their opponents in Sunday’s draw.