Orlando Pirates head coach Josef Zinnbauer has responded to the costly error made by the club’s number one Richard Ofori in his side’s MTN8 defeat to Swallows on Saturday.
The Ghanaian, who missed a large chunk of last season due to injury, was the preferred ahead of Wayne Sandilands and Siyabonga Mpontshane as Pirates began their defence of the MTN8 title.
However, it turned out to be a day to forget for Ofori, whose hesitance in clearing a ball he had intercepted, saw Swallows ace Ruzaigh Gamildien capitalize, as he lofted the ball into an empty net.
The striker scored twice in their 2-1 win.
After the match, Zinnbauer leapt to the defence of Ofori, attributing the costly error to a lack of match fitness for the keeper.
“If you concede a goal from a goalkeeper mistake, it is always unlucky. We are not happy with this, but most of the time when keepers make a mistake, it ends up as a goal,” Zinnbauer told the media.
“We know we have to work, (Richard) Ofori was out for a long time but he had some good friendly games and performed well in training as well, now it wasn’t his day, but it is like that – when a keeper makes a mistake it’s a goal.”
“It’s not easy for the goalkeeper to then come back and it's also not easy for the team, but the team made a good decision and [had] a good response, but this was not enough. We had opportunities to score more than one goal then nobody will talk about Ofori but it's always like that, we knew the question would come. We [are going to] analyse him, work with him and he will be 100% better but I know last season Ofori won games for us but sometimes you lose the game. So we’ll work with him, and he’ll be better,” the German added.
Pirates’ next assignment comes in the form of Stellenbosch FC, who they take on in the DStv Premiership opener.
View all the action from the encounter:
