Botswana’s Orapa United coach Gadimang Tiiso has downplayed that his team is yet to score in the CAF Confederation Cup group stage going into their penultimate Group C encounter against USM Alger on Sunday.
In a pre-match press conference on Saturday, Tiiso said the seven goals they have conceded without scoring in four games do not reveal the whole story about Orapa's debut showing in the competition.
“If you look at our performance from the first game, the team is doing well,” he said. “We lost but the performance was very good. The group is still open; we can qualify. We must take one game at a time going into the next game. We need to focus more and approach it with a winning mentality that even though we are at the bottom of the group, we also want to progress to the quarterfinals.”
The coach for the Botswana team insisted that they learned lessons from their 6-0 loss to the Algerians in the first leg and were ready to improve their performance on Sunday.
“This is a completely different game and a completely different approach. We also drew lessons which we can’t reveal. We have nothing to lose in this game tomorrow. We will still approach it with a winning mentality,” Tiiso added.
Going into Sunday's game at Obed Itani Chilume Stadium in Francistown, Orapa anchor Group C with two points. The debutants lie a distant six points behind leaders USM Alger and three behind second and third positioned ASEC Mimosas and ASC Jaraaf from Ivory Coast and Senegal.
Orapa lost 6-0 to USM Alger, drew 0-0 with ASEC, chalked a similar result against ASC Jaraaf at home in Botswana then lost 1-0 to the Senegalese opponents in Dakar. Orapa will wind up their Group C assignments by facing ASEC Mimosas next Sunday.
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