You’re a disgrace to Kaizer Chiefs!

Here we go, again, lambasting yet another bout of despicable behaviour from a section of Kaizer Chiefs supporters who continue to drag the club’s name through the mud. The disgraceful behaviour that saw coach Molefi Ntseki being pelted with missiles and escorted off the Peter Mokaba Stadium on Wednesday night needs to be condemned with the contempt it deserve!

What happened to the “Love and Peace” mantra? This is an institution that prides itself on having love and peace run through their veins. The Glamour Boys of South African football have become a mockery, not only on the field of play through their failure to win any silverware in the last eight years but also in the stands, where they have always dominated. This is the second time the Naturena-based club’s supporters have embarrassed and disgraced their team in a campaign that is only seven games old! This is despicable and totally unacceptable! Yes, losing 1-0 against SuperSport United was disappointing, but that doesn’t justify your hooliganism on the night! This barbaric behaviour can’t go unchallenged, for long. In fact, you’ve embarrassed the team and the brand too much in such a short space of time! There is just no better way to describe you other than saying you are a disgrace to Chiefs!

What is mind-blogging is the simple fact that Chiefs gave a better performance and looked progressive, only to be failed by their poor finishing. Surely, real football supporters would have noticed an improvement from their games against Royal AM and SuperSport. Coach Ntseki even lamented his team’s poor finishing but admitted it was work in progress. You can’t expect miracles or overnight success, you just have to trust the process! Coach Ntseki is the man entrusted with leading the team, that’s the bottom line, whether you like it or not. You can’t behave like that if you really love your football club and are a real supporter, never!

Your irrational behaviour stole the limelight, once again, as it did on August 20th after the 1-0 away loss to TS Galaxy at Mbombela Stadium, so much that people forgot about the team’s performance. You’re slowly but surely taking a p**s on the image and reputation of such an institution that has contributed so much to South African football by consistently and stupidly acting out of character. Not only that, your delusional actions affect not just your so-called favourite team but the country’s football at large, as we are now viewed as hooligans and a laughing stock of a country that claims to be football-mad. This has gone too far and we’ve bemoaned and discouraged this behaviour on numerous occasions, but the message just doesn’t seem to land. What is clearly becoming frustrating and embarrassing is that there seems to be nothing done about this growing phenomenon. When these hooligans, masked as football supporters, throw missiles, it is usually after the final whistle. At that time, some people have vacated or are in the process of vacating the venue and these perpetrators can be easily seen and spotted, so why not arrest them? We can even use video footage, as it is the case in Europe, to identify, arrest, ban and deal with these hoodlums decisively! It is about time we took action against these guys instead of just punishing the team, so that they also bear the brunt of the law for their actions. Yes, they represent the club by virtue of being their supporters, but, for all we know, some of these guys don’t even have supporters’ membership cards and are therefore not in the club’s data. They could just be hooligans who decide to go to the stadium on matchday, after a drunken spree. Some of them probably don’t even watch the game with an analytical eye and just react to the disappointing result and see this “useless coach” who “must go”. We can’t call these people football supporters but hooligans! We just have to call it what it is! They are a disgrace to Kaizer Chiefs! You are a disgrace to Kaizer Chiefs and South African football because your actions continue to taint our image and project us as unruly. What you are doing now has dire repercussions for the club and you are just not being fair to the club you claim to love and support! Chiefs is pulling out all the stops to redeem their former glory and instead, of supporting them, all you do is continuously dragging their name and brand through the mud!

For the club to be hauled over the coals for the second time this campaign, when we have not even reached 10 league games yet, is just insane at best and ridiculous at worst. They will be reporting to the PSL’s Disciplinary Committee instead of visiting to collect the Coach of the Month, Player of the Month or Q-1 Innovation award. Once again, what happened to “Love and Peace”? Why are you all allowing this to continue happening unchallenged? By the same token, we have to protect the rest of the supporters and make it clear that not all of them, but just a section, take part in these ridiculous acts. However, we also have to hold every Chiefs supporter accountable for these unfortunate incidents. As genuine supporters, you can’t continue to allow people to put your team’s name into disrepute. You call them to order and stop them! You just do what you have to do to put an end to this nonsense, obviously without any violence involved. Football has no place for barbaric behaviour. Football has no place for throwing missiles at coaches, players, officials or anyone for that matter! When people go to the stadium, they are going on a ‘vacation’ to escape from their daily troubles and this is the place they expect to find comfort and happiness rather than getting caught in the middle of missiles thrown back and forth.

If you are not happy with coach Ntseki and his team’s progress, the best thing to do is to stay home. Stay home! Watch them on television if you want or boycott them completely rather than going to the stadium to vent your frustrations. You have the power to ‘vote with your feet’ and stay away until you are happy. To go there and disrupt the proceedings is just unacceptable and should not be tolerated at all. There are decent ways to register your concerns with the club, violence is just not an option. This is unacceptable, guys, and we are never going to grow weary of lambasting and calling it what it is. Make use of your branches to express your unhappiness with the team and engage them properly, rather than resorting to violence. There is just no place for your unbecoming behaviour in football. If you are one of the well-behaved and innocent supporters reading this, good for you, but you know what they say about one rotten potato spoiling the whole bag. Until you, collectively, do something about this behaviour, unfortunately, you will also be guilty by association.

We can do better than howling and throwing missiles at coach Ntseki and he doesn’t deserve any of this. No one does! We just can’t carry on like this because it is plain inhumane. We expect our players and coaches to give their best, all the time, win, draw or lose, but what are we bringing to the table? Maybe it is time for all of us to do some introspection and see if we are doing enough to play our role as the 12th man on the field. There is no place for violence in football and the sooner we nip this misconduct in the bud, the better. This sport is not called the Beautiful Game for nothing.