Pirates mystery to Da Gama

Owen da Gama watched Orlando Pirates in some pre-season matches last month, but the Platinum Stars coach admits he still hasn't figured out the Buccaneers.

Pirates and Stars meet in an Premier Soccer League match tonight at Orlando stadium, where Da Gama will have 90 minutes to correct that shortcoming.

Platinum Stars beat Ajax Cape Town 2-0 in their league opener at the weekend, but Da Gama said the depth in the Pirates team made it hard for him to prepare for tonight's game.

The Buccaneers also clinched three points in their first match of the new Premier League season, winning 2-0 against newly-promoted side Black Leopards.

"They are a good-quality team," Da Gama said of Pirates.

"But we are not sure whether their coach [Julio Leal] will have a settled starting line-up or if he will change things a bit.

"Pirates have so much depth on the pitch and on the bench that it is difficult to know who will start. But we have to focus on our game and not over-analyse them."

Da Gama is a former Pirates coach, but the team has changed its style and players since he left it in 2008.

"There's a bit of an advantage for us because Pirates would have only seen us for the first time on Saturday [against Ajax Cape Town].

"We will still make some changes because we prepare differently for each of our games," the coach said.

Stars fans would have been nervous when the PSL fixture dates were released, with the club's first three matches being against last season's champions [Pirates], runners-up [Ajax] and fifth-placed Bloemfontein Celtic.

Stars, who will again use the Royal Bafokeng stadium as their home venue, finished 10th last season.

"It's certainly a good way of preparing for the long season, to play the [PSL] champions and the runners-up," Da Gama said.

"It's a good mechanism to try and get us to the level we want to be at."

Pirates assistant coach Tebogo Moloi meanwhile said he expected Stars to come to Orlando only for a point.

"Playing Platinum Stars is similar to facing off against Santos. They only come to our home venue for a point.

"They also try to catch us with a counter-attack, but we are too clever for that," Moloi said.

The former Pirates player hinted Benni McCarthy would get his first start of the season tonight.

"Bongani [Ndulula] is really tired.

"He is the only player at Pirates who didn't get a decent break because he was involved with the under-23 team [Africa Games qualifiers]," the Bucs assistant coach said.

"He needs a bit of rest, even though he scored against Black Leopards in our first league match.

"I was also impressed that [Baby Bafana coach] Bra Shakes [Mashaba] didn't call him up last week for a friendly match."

Moloi said to start the Buccaneers' title defence with a win against Leopards last week had helped set the pace for the team this season.

"For the technical team, the win was more important than how we performed.

"It's early days and we need time to settle before we play more league games," said Moloi.