Soweto Derby rivals confident

Both Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates coaches have talked up their chances of winning Saturday's Soweto derby at Soccer City.

Amakhosi's Vladimir Vermezovic even went as far as promising Buccaneers' coach Ruud Krol "another Premier League football lesson", with Chiefs having beaten the Buccaneers 3-1 in the first round.

But the two Soweto rivals are likely to encounter a below-par pitch at Soccer City, host of last year's World Cup final, after the stadium hosted the U2 concert 10 days ago.

However, shifting the match to another stadium with four days to go before the big match was yesterday ruled out by the league's chief operations officer, Ronnie Schloss.

The concert has left the pitch in a bad condition and the stadium management are in a race against time to get the field ready.

"About 75000 tickets have been sold already for this match and 94000 have been made available," said Schloss.

"We have accepted that the state of the pitch will not be in good condition and will not be the same as it was before the U2 concert, but the match will be played at Soccer City this weekend.

"We still have a few days to fix it, but we will have to maybe patch up a few areas of the pitch. We are concerned about the field at the moment, but that doesn't warrant the league moving the venue to Loftus in Pretoria for example, which has the capacity crowd far less [42800] than Soccer City."

Although Vermezovic and Krol will not be happy about the scrappy pitch, the two coaches will be otherwise relieved this potential league decider will not be moved to a different venue or postponed.

"A lot of people think my team is arrogant after beating Pirates twice in 20 days last year," Vermezovic said. "We are not, we are just confident and we enjoy the matches we play against Orlando Pirates. The match against Pirates will not decide anything because three points against Pirates and three points against any other PSL team is the same for us.

"But I am not afraid of Pirates going into Saturday's match because we have seen all that is there to see. We know them and there's nothing new."

Between the two coaches, Krol is the most worried as far as team selection is concerned. He doesn't have much to choose from, with key players Clifford Ngobeni and Tlou Segolela serving suspensions. Goalkeeper Moeneeb Josephs will miss the derby, while Andile Jali only started light training yesterday and Thulasizwe Mbuyane is expected at the training grounds today.

"The league is unpredictable and that is a fantastic thing at the moment," Krol said. "We want to keep the gap wide between us and Chiefs, as well as Ajax Cape Town and Mamelodi Sundowns. At the end of the Soweto derby, we want Pirates to be No1.

"We also play to win and our week is getting better for us as players are coming back to the team after injuries last week."