Soweto Derby: Orlando Pirates players will cope without me - Jose Riveiro

The Spaniard is serving the last of this two-match ban and assistant coach Sergio Almenara will be in charge, alongside Mandla Ncikazi, in his absence.

But Riveiro is adamant it will be business as usual come 15h00 tomorrow afternoon.

"Unfortunately I'm not going to be there on the bench, where I'm supposed to be, but no, it's not a big problem for the players or anybody else," said the 47-year-old tactician.

"Nowadays, I have fantastic support staff behind me, the players at Pirates are used to working with all of our coaches at the same level that they work with me.

"We all have different roles, and they [players] are used to dealing with that situation. As I said, even one week ago our influence on the games from the bench on a normal day is not much.

"We try to reproduce some movements and [follow] some instructions but it's not easy to make contact with our players [during a match]."

Despite Chiefs winning the previous four derbies between the two sides, Riveiro doesn’t believe there is too much separating them this season. 

"It's going to be a rough game, very equal like it was before – like the game we played in the Carling Cup as well. I don't think we're going to see big surprises in terms of the way to approach the game from both teams," he added.

"We're trying to do things our own way, [and] the reality is that we are just three points ahead of Chiefs at this moment and it's true that in recent games our results were better."