Jose Riveiro: People were writing Orlando Pirates off

The Buccaneers got two quick-fire goals within the opening five minutes, through attacker Relebohile Mofokeng, forcing their rivals to spend the rest of the match fighting to claw their way back. 

Pirates’ have now reduced the points gap at the top to 15, with the Soweto giants still four fixtures behind, and Riveiro says it would have been ideal to face Sundowns having already caught up on those matches to get a true reflection of where they are.

"Every point is important in a league where it seems there's one team who's going to finish close to 80 points, probably by the end of the season," said Riveiro.

"So obviously if you want to compete with them, when you look at the schedule, you cannot say to yourself, 'Okay, here if we get a point, it's fine', or even today playing against them, 'If we get a point, it's going to be alright', it's not.

"You have to always fight for the maximum points, and again, it's a pity that we're not arriving in this game – obviously we're going into the space of the 'ifs', but still we have four games more to play than them.

"It would have been nice to have [had] those games played already, come here and maybe, I don't know, even if we are six or seven points behind them and even three points, just that little advantage would give the game a different dimension, I'm sure.

"It would then speak more clear about our reality. The reality is that we have – how many points right now? A lot of points, I think it's not frequent at this moment of the season, with this amount of games.

"But if you only look at the gap, maybe you can think the way that people maybe were thinking too much this week that this [title race] is over, and we're not doing well, and all these things that you were asking me before the match, and now we're here."

READ: Jose Riveiro remains coy over Orlando Pirates future