Usuthu clash 'emotional' for Pirates' Tapelo Xoki

Orlando Pirates centre-back Tapelo Xoki has braced himself for an emotional battle with his former side AmaZulu.

Pirates host AmaZulu in a league tie at Orlando Stadium tonight (7.30pm). Xoki captained Usuthu for a number of seasons, before joining Pirates in the off-season. Khayelitsha-born, Cape Town, defender still feels sentimental attachment to Usuthu, though he understands he must now help the Buccaneers prevail.

"Obviously AmaZulu are my former team and I left them recently, so it's natural for me to be emotional when I play against them. The emotions are part of the game but I am focused on the job at hand which is to help my team win,'' Xoki told Sowetan.

"I will be coming up against people who were my teammates a few months ago, so there'll be emotions but I am ready to shake that off. Football is always about what's in front of you at that moment...the past doesn't really matter that much. I will only rekindle my relationship with AmaZulu after the game if need be."

Going into this game, Pirates are under a lot of pressure as they have failed to score a goal in their last three outings, where they drew twice and lost once. Xoki has emphasised they shoulder the scoring responsibility as a team, disregarding the outside noise about their failure to net goals in the past three games.

"Football is a team sport. We haven't been scoring as a team. We can't say as defenders we don't feel the pressure because we are a team. We are all responsible for this [the scoring problem]. As defenders we also miss chances in set-plays, so you can't expect only our strikers to shoulder the responsibility of scoring. We also defend as a team because this is football,'' Xoki insisted.

"We know we can fix this, starting against AmaZulu. We are not going to listen to the outside noise because that would mean we don't know what we must do."