United thrash Orlando Pirates

2006-07-15 18:45

Johannesburg - It was a soothing stroll in King's Park for what was little more than a Manchester United reserve team as Orlando Pirates suffered a humbling and humiliating 4-0 Vodacom Challenge defeat in Durban on Saturday afternoon.

From as early as the third minute when Norwegian international striker Ole Gunnar Solskjaer ended a three-year, injury-plagued scoring drought, with the first of two first-half goals for The Red Devils following a powerful angled drive, that the outcome of the one-sided game took an inevitable and predictable course.

Kieran Richardson, with a sweetly-timed 20-metre pile driver into the roof of the net in the 57th minute, and an "own goal" from Pirates' Lehlo Seema in the 61st minute completed the scoring, with United seemingly never required to engage top gear.

And as a sorry indictment of the amateurish and out-smarted Buccaneers was the fact that they lost by four goals - and it could have been more - in spite of enjoying 53% of largely aimless ball possession.

It was not exactly an auspicious day for South African sport, what with the rugby Springboks pulverised 49-0 by Australia.

And Pirates did precious little to lift the pall of gloom for a 30 000 crowd as they huffed and puffed and re-emphasised the glaring shortcomings that exist in so many facets of South African soccer at this moment.

If Pirates were shown up most in the area of clinical and precise finishing, they invariably took up wrong options as well in deciding what to do with the ball and demonstrated none of the effective perception displayed in the ranks of United's budding youngsters.

And it has to be remembered that a further indictment against last season's PSL runners-up was the fact that theoretically everything was supposed to be in their favour on home soil against a side deprived of all their World Cup stars and who only arrived in South Africa little 24 hours before the kick-off.

Francis Chansa in the Pirates' goal must have felt as though he had been stabbed in the back by his own teammates - such were the glaring leaks in The Buccaneers' defence.

Assistant Manchester United manager and former Bafana Bafana coach Carlos Queiroz could have been excused a wry smile as the limitations of the locals were exposed - remembering that he had been hounded out of his position as the South African coach four years ago for selecting too many overseas-based players.

- SAPA