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Orlando Pirates winger Patrick ‘Tito’ Maswanganyi has explained what sparked his emotional half-time speech that helped his side turn a 1-2 into a 3-2 win against Kaizer Chiefs.
The most recent Soweto Derby was one of the greatest in recent history, with Kaizer Chiefs twice going ahead thanks to a brace by Ashley Du Preez, which led to Amakhosi taking a 2-1 lead into the break.
But during half-time Maswanganyi, who wasn’t known to be much of a motivator in the change room, stepped up to push his teammates in a now famous speech.
“We’re afraid of playing. We don’t know what we’ve doing. There’s no pressure! They are not giving us pressure,” he said, as revealed in Pirates’ second instalment of The Changeroom documentary on SuperSportTV.
“But when we get the ball, we panic and lose the ball. We have a lot of space. We shouldn’t panic. Let’s play football, the football we know. Our football. Let’s press them, they can’t beat us! If we also believe they won’t beat us, let’s put everything in.
“If we lose, it’s fine, but we won’t. Let’s play the football we know.”
The speech was followed by a few encouraging words from Richard Ofori, with even head coach Jose Riveiro admitting he didn’t need to add much more because the players had basically motivated each other already.
“After the reaction of the players I understood there is nothing I need to touch here,” the Spanish tactician commented.
“I don’t need to create conflict or put the players because they’re doing that themselves. They are on the map. They know they are together in this.
“What we showed in the locker room from the players it gave us the feeling that the second half was going to be for us.”
Maswanganyi also opened up on his famous speech in Pirates’ documentary, saying he felt the team were letting themselves down against an opponent he knew “could not” beat them.
“I think I was still frustrated from the game we played on Wedneseday, because we didn’t play well,” he recalled.
“We were supposed to win that game. But when played on Saturday the coach had said that from Wednesday’s results, we are supposed to use this game to bounce back and get positive results for ourselves, fans, and families.
“So I was basically saying ‘we can’t give up’, even when we faced bad results on Wednesday and we still want to perform badly on the Saturday against a team I knew couldn’t beat us.
“I don’t think it matters when you arrived in the team, whether you’re playing or not. At that moment, we need someone to encourage and motivate the team to remind us to wake up. In that moment I felt the need to say something and maybe it would help because I was annoyed that we were losing.
“We are a big team, so we can’t play like a small team. It needs to be evident on the field, that we are a big team by playing with intention.”
Goals from Thabiso Lebitso and Monnapule Saleng turned the game in Pirates’ favour in the second half.