Orlando Pirates head coach Jose Riveiro admits they cannot afford any slip ups if they have any realistic chance for the league title against Mamelodi Sundowns.
Sundowns are chasing an eighth consecutive league crown and have a 15-point lead despite the 2-1 loss to Pirates on Sunday at FNB Stadium.
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Should Pirates win their four games in hand, they could potentially cut the gap to just three points, with both clubs on course for record-points tallies come end of the season.
“Every point is important in a league when there’s one team who will finish close to 80 points probably by the end of the season, so if you want to compete with them, when you look at the schedule you can’t say okay here if we get a point, it’s fine,” he said about the title race.
“Playing against them, getting a point was not going to be alright, you have to always fight for the points, it’s a pity that we’re not arriving in this game – we’re going to the space of the ‘if’s’ but we have four games more to play than them.
“It would be nice to have those games played already, come here maybe, even if we’re fix or seven points behind, not even three, just that little advantage will give the game a different dimension, I’m sure. It will speak more clear about our reality.
“The reality is that we have a lot of points, [43], it’s not frequent at this moment of the season with this amount of games but if you only look at the gap you can maybe think like people who were thinking too much this week, that it’s over, we’re not doing well.
“All these things you were asking me before the match, instead of asking me about the match and now we’re here.”
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Relebohile Mofokeng’s brace inside five minutes secured what was deemed as the six-pointer on the day at the Calabash and the running narrative throughout the press conference was Riveiro saying they silence the doubters, saying more than three occasions how they are a ‘serious’ team and questions about their form was unwarranted pre-match.
“I said before the match it’s three points, but people call this a six-pointer, when we play, we play we get a result or not, we go to the locker room, you check your phone and check, you want to see that the teams you are chasing didn’t get the result,” he said.
“We know we got the result immediately, and the team we’re chasing, didn’t get a result, it was an opportunity to reduce the distance but again, still a long way to go and again we’re playing against a team who is used to collecting a lot of points.
“I’m sure it will be a tight race if we’re at the level the challenge is asking, that’s what we need to prove from now until the end, but we’re at the level the challenge is asking for each and every team in the league and we want to be there.
“Let’s see if we’re capable of doing it and in the end of the season, we’re not, what we’re going to do? We go again! That’s sport, that’s football – that’s life, we are there, trying every week to do the job. We proved we’re a very serious team.”
