Orlando Pirates head coach Jose Riveiro says although they did not have much time to prepare, they were in a better space mentally in the Nedbank Cup semi-finals than in their previous derby losses against Kaizer Chiefs.
Pirates went to the semi-final meeting against Chiefs on Saturday having lost five consecutive games in the league Soweto derbies but ended their losing streak against their rivals after beating them 2-1 to book a spot in the final.
Read: Soweto Derby Squabble: It Doesn't Mean They Hate Each Other
Riveiro says they did not have much time to prepare after they played a league game on Wednesday but they spent time in the analysis rooms not to repeat the same mistakes they did in the previous derby losses and believes their performance was better than in the previous clashes against Amakhosi.
"To be honest, we didn't have time to prepare (for) the game, our training was in the meeting room, analysing with the players what we think it's gonna happen in the game," Riveiro said in a press conference.
"Losing games is not nice, it's not funny, not at all, especially when you're in Pirates and you lose one game with Chiefs but our obligation is to learn from those games.
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"Now it's easy to say we did it because we won the game but (anything) could have happened, maybe we lose the game on penalties but I think until we managed to play in the rhythm that we want, I think we did things better than in the previous game," he said.
The Spanish mentor carried on and revealed that they were in a better state mentally than in the previous derby games and they noticed that just before the match.
"The way we approached the game mentally was totally different than in the previous ones. In the previous derbies we were not in a good space, there were many things that affected us that I cannot say loud, that did not allow us to be in the condition that we'll like to be in those games.
"And today (on Saturday) was different, what the team expressed, yesterday (Friday) in our minus one, today (Saturday) before the game in our camp it was different and we noticed that," he added.
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