Jose Riveiro vows to maintain pressure on Mamelodi Sundowns

The Buccaneers ground out the result last night, narrowly beating Sekhukhune United 2-1 at Old Peter Mokaba Stadium, to remain within six points of Sundowns, who swept aside SuperSport United in the Tshwane derby.

Ahead of this Saturday’s top-of-the-table clash at Loftus Stadium, Riveiro says they continue to feel the responsibility to challenge and try to end The Brazilians’ reign.

"It's the same pressure since day one when I arrived here. I'm coaching Pirates, a champion team, a winning team, and everybody is expecting us to improve the history of the club, and to get titles," said Riveiro.

"We're trying, we're having a fantastic start – we're in February, but we can still talk about the start of the league because it's game number 13 – but at the same time, we are fighting with other good teams.

"One of them being an excellent team, who are the [league] champion for the last seven years, if I'm not wrong, so even though we've had an excellent start to the season, we're still some points behind, but we're not going to stop, we'll keep fighting and performing.

"Hopefully we'll have enough luck every week to get the result and, like I said, and the pressure has been the same since day one – there's nothing different this season.

"It's true that right now the team is giving more reasons to the people who think we can make it, and that's very good new [thing], but there's nothing new or different in terms of the responsibility that we all feel to be part of this team."

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