“They’re an extremely difficult team to play against,” said Riveiro.
Orlando Pirates coach Jose Riveiro was delighted to have collected maximum points against a “tough” side like TS Galaxy.
This comes after the Buccaneers beat The Rockets 2-0 at the Mbombela Stadium on Tuesday night to make it six wins in six Betway Premiership matches.
Thalente Mbatha and Relebohile Mofokeng scored the goals for Pirates and Riveiro was happy with the “massive three points” against Galaxy.
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“It’s the game we expected. Every time we come here to Mpumalanga to face Galaxy it’s always a very tough one. They’re an extremely difficult team to play against,” said Riveiro after the match.
“They push you to play at a very high tempo throughout the 90 minutes, and the moment that you want to slow down the game and control it, they don’t allow you to do it.
“You have to keep going and today we did a fantastic job in terms of work ethic, and consistency and we didn’t concede goal chances, even though Galaxy managed to dominate us, but without creating so much danger,” he added.
“It’s a massive three points for us. We came here with the mentality to collect three points knowing it’s going to be difficult and we lost here 1-0 a few months ago. But this time it’s for us, and I think it’s a well-deserved three points after a good performance.”
Riveiro also praised Mbatha’s contribution to the team after the Bafana Bafana midfielder opened the scoring for Pirates with a well-taken long-range strike in the 16th minute.
“He’s contributing a lot to the collective like other players. We have talent and quality in our team in every position. It’s a luxury for me to have this kind of arsenal at my disposal. “
Galaxy coach says ‘no reason to panic’
Meanwhile, following the loss to Pirates, Galaxy moved to the bottom of the league standings after collecting just one point in five matches.
Coach Sead Ramovic, however, says there’s no reason to panic yet as Galaxy have played mostly away games this season.
“We’ve played seven away games out of the eight. Which other team in the league has played seven away games out of eight, which one? Also, we didn’t do well in away games last season. We only managed to collect two wins and three draws.”
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Ramovic added that Galaxy are also in a rebuilding phase after selling some of their key players at the end of last season.
“If you sell half of your team, it’s not easy. If you sell players then you need to rebuild and it’s not going to be the same team as the previous season. But we’ll get to a stage where we’ll collect the three points.”
Galaxy’s next league game is against Stellenbosch FC away next week Wednesday but before that, The Rockets will host Magesi FC in a Carling Knockout quarter-final clash on Sunday.
