It’s not done yet – Miguel Cardoso on title race

Sundowns thrashed Richards Bay 3-0 at Loftus while The Buccaneers huffed and puffed in a 1-0 defeat at home against Sekhukhune United.

The Brazilians now have a 12 point lead at the top, albeit having played two matches more than Pirates.

But Cardoso did not want to get ahead of himself with five games still to be played in the month of May.

"I'm really surprised as you understand from my voice, because I didn't know. All that will depend on ourselves. There are still five games to play and things are not done for sure because our opponent will not give up and we need to make points and points and points,” Cardoso said.

“Obviously, that, if we can enlarge the advantage, it gives us more comfort but that doesn't take nothing from the way we should do. We have five tough matches to play and the next one is already away in Cape Town with Cape Town that's a team that is fighting and has its own objectives.

“So, we should respect ourselves, respect the opponent, respect the competition and not sleep on what we did. When you sleep on what you did, you can have problems. We played one more game today, five to go, if we got extra advantage that's fantastic but it's not something we should manage. It's not to manage, it's keep on going. We need to win our matches."

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The Portuguese mentor vowed not to allow Sundowns players to take the foot of the pedal now that the gap appears unassailable. 

"I will not give rest to my players, I will not. Today I provoked them to really make a strong start, I really provoked them. We are really capable of doing that, why not? I wanna test them and I will continue to do that because the boys need to push themselves. This championship is tough, there's a lot to go, let's see how it will go,” he added.

“The schedule, let's see everything that's gonna happen but we have in the next three weeks to play the five remaining games, so we know it will be tough but we are motivated.

“We are happy but we are aware of the responsibility we carry and the level of our opponents and we respect them as much as possible. Respecting them is doing our job, be strong, keep training, keep working hard until the end. Only with that attitude we can win this championship, a lot to go still."