Orlando Pirates head coach Jose Riveiro says nobody is invincible but they didn’t produce a ‘zero points’ performance against Stellenbosch on Sunday afternoon.
Stellenbosch ended Pirates club-record run of seven wins to start a new season and prevent them from going back to the summit of the league.
It moved Steve Barker’s side into third, six points off the Buccaneers, thanks to Devin Titus’ first-half goal.
“It was the game we expected, we had a good start to the match, good 15, 10 minutes, with opportunities through Monyane and Hotto in the box,” he said.
“They threatened early in the match as we planned to do, we didn’t capitalise, it was difficult to play advantage in the central corridors, the field was extremely dry as usual in the daytime – we weren’t precise enough in [those areas].
“They found Titus in a transition and he finished the action really well to make it 1-0, we tried everything we could, we had good chances to equalise, to not get away with zero points, it wasn’t zero point performance today.
“But as I said many times, it’s a scoring game, they scored one goal, we didn’t, three points for Stellenbosch – they fought in an incredible way for every action, for every meter and in the end they get three points, no dramas, nobody in invincible.
“We got our first defeat in the league and now it’s time to recover tonight, start again, we have a big game on Saturday [against Al Ahly] and we now prepare for that – nothing else, we keep going.”
Pirates will host the African champions in their second Champions League group stage game at eSgodini on Saturday (15h00).
