MATSHELANE MAMABOLO
COMMENT
THE DEBATABLE refereeing decisions that have left Kaizer Chiefs fans feeling their club could have got something out of the Betway Premiership clash with Mamelodi Sundowns, are fooling Amakhosi from the reality of their situation. Chiefs are nowhere near being championship material.
Granted, there is already evidence of improvement from last season. Coach Nasreddine Nabi has clearly brought some positive energy into a team that had previously resembled a bird without a song.
But beating Marumo Gallants and AmaZulu should never have been used as a yardstick of Chiefs’ readiness to return to the long-forgotten glory days of old. It was always going to be clashes with the top teams, such as Sundowns, where Chiefs’ true character was to be tested.
And ‘robbed’ as they were by the officials, as their fans would like us to believe, Chiefs were revealed as a team still in need of a lot of work before they can be considered title contenders.
You saw it in their failure to capitalise on a flying start which – if you actually observed the match objectively – came against the run of play as Sundowns were dictating matters even that early on.
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A finished product would have been able to not only protect that lead but probably found ways to add to it. Instead, Chiefs allowed Sundowns the equaliser and the winner within a four-minute period.
As Sundowns coach Manqoba Mngqithi said post-match, the defending champions could have punished their adversaries on the counter-attack had they been more precise during that time when Chiefs put the visitors under the cosh.
There can be no denying Ronwen Williams’ big role in shutting Chiefs out with some brilliant saves, but there was evidence that Nabi will have to strengthen his strikeforce because Ranga Chivaviro – his two goals in two matches notwithstanding – is not going to deliver consistently.
The striker missed two glorious chances that championship-winning strikers should not waste and Nabi admitted afterwards that the forward still needs some work if he is to excel.
“I think the team looks very good. It looks refreshed, it looks energised and the structure that coach Nabi is playing with is very potent, it is very difficult for teams to understand.”
The Tunisian confirmed that he is looking to find another striker in the next transfer window to complement Chivaviro. Nabi also admitted that “I don’t have all the material for my model game, I have the vision. I have the model game I want but I don’t have all the material.”
He explained that he could not buy players in the previous transfer window because there was no one out there who fit the bill. Lest the Chiefs fans start accusing me of being a prophet of doom for their club, I agree with Mngqithi that there is vast improvement at the club.
“I think the team looks very good. It looks refreshed, it looks energised and the structure that coach Nabi is playing with is very potent, it is very difficult for teams to understand,” the Sundowns coach said.
Now they just need to put the final touches: their strikers must finish off their chances, while the team must play with intensity throughout their matches or for sustained periods, instead of starting like a house on fire and then petering out afterwards, just like they did against AmaZulu.
It is a process that needs patience and Chiefs fans will do well to afford Nabi that because he appears to be a coach with a plan that can help bring back the glory days to Naturena. Most important for the Amakhosi faithful to realise is that Nabi firmly believes Chiefs are a massive club that should be competing not only for domestic honours but for continental glory too.
He has revealed that the club has given him the budget to get the players he believes can deliver. Once he gets them and turns the ones he has into a well-oiled machine, who knows what Nabi can do for Chiefs.
But it is not something that is going to happen overnight and the club’s fans would do well to make peace with that and support the coach and club as they work towards returning to the top of the country’s elite league.