Downs took the lead in the 57th minute through a Nascimento penalty, Shalulile netted in the 76th minute and Lakay fired in an 80th minute free-kick
Orlando Pirates head coach Josef Zinnbauer was not too despondent after his side’s 3-0 defeat to Mamelodi Sundowns in a league match played at the Orlando Stadium on Sunday afternoon.
Pirates had still been in with a chance of a result before two quick-fire goals wrapped it up for Sundowns with 15 minutes to play.
“They [Sundowns] have very good individual players, we know this. But this was also the conditioning aspect when you lose the ball easily,” Zinnbauer told SuperSport TV after the match.
“It was not because of the structure that we lose the ball, it was more the concentration in the passing lines, from the passing what we want.”
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The likes of captain Happy Jele, talisman Thembinkosi Lorch, number one goalkeeper Richard Ofori and striker Zakhele Lepasa are just some of the Bucs players currently injured.
And at the end of a long season, as well as a trip this week to Nigeria to play Enyimba in the Caf Confederation Cup, Zinnbauer insinuated that fatigue could also have been an issue on Sunday.
“But we have to understand, we have so many injured players at the moment. We have a long, long travel in the last two days,” he added.
“We have not one training session on the field. Yesterday a little bit, but you cannot train, you need the power for [Sunday’s] game. Then you don’t have the concentration and we have not a big squad at the moment, we cannot make a lot of changes in the last weeks.
“It’s always the same players on the field, Sundowns have a little more and in such games you need such players – Happy Jele, Lorch, [Terrence] Dzvukamanja, they have experience in such games.
“You have then the chance to bring these players [from the bench] to have an impact, or you have them from the starting line-up.”
In closing, the German reiterated that he was content with the performance, if not the score, against the Brazilians.
“With this performance, I have no fear in the next games,” he concluded.
