Benedict Vilakazi, Orlando Pirates Legend is disappointed by the Buccaneers current form. Shedding light on their goal scoring problems despite the quality available to the Spanish Head Coach Jose Riveiro.
“I’m disappointed with Orlando Pirates so far, taking into consideration the players that they have, where they are and how they are playing,” Vilakazi told This Is Football Africa.
“If you watch the past three games, you know they are not scoring, they don’t create a lot of chances. It tells you that something is not right somewhere.”
The Soweto-born little maestro who also had a stint in Denmark with Aalborg BK, has questioned whether the coach understands the attributes and the qualities of the players at his disposal.
“I don’t know if the coach understands his players, or if the players don’t understand the coach,” continued Benedict Vilakazi.
“The system should suit your players, and then those players will compliment the system you want them to play. If you have a system but you don’t have the players to fit this system of yours, it will give you a problem.
“I sense that the way he wants Pirates to play, it doesn’t really sit well with his material. The players to me look confused, and there is nothing wrong with using the width, but when you use the width, you know that if you got a tall guy upfront, then that is the reason why you are using the width. Another thing, if you use the width with a short guy upfront, then the crosses need to be hard and low, in between the keeper and the defence. So that you force the defenders to defend facing their goalposts. Against AmaZulu they get the ball wide and are making crosses but they forget that they have got a short guy like Erasmus who is not good in the air. So you are not making use of his strengths, and you are cancelling a key player out, a very good striker because of that.”
Tso as he is known, has scored 52 goals whilst wearing the number 15 jersey in his eight years at Pirates, and still holds the record of having scored the most goals at the club, even though he was a midfielder.
“The only thing that will give you points, is if you put the ball in the back of the net, and that’s where they are lacking. Pirates will have possession but they are not using it productively, also in order to score goals you need to create chances, and it raises the question as to how are they gonna score? The argument could come and you can say they are not conceding, yes, but are they scoring? No, so it means that they are playing for one point. The coach needs to look at that and try to find the right combination in his team. He needs to play 4-3-3, because it will suit the Pirates’ players.”
