Chop & change The Solinas shuffle is taking Chiefs nowhere
The Amakhosi coach has yet to come up with a regular central defensive pair in the 14 games he’s played thus far and has used these five players at different times with mixed results
● Four different centreback combinations in 14 matches and the results have looked like a badly mixed bag of vegetables.
It’s a story of Kaizer Chiefs under Italian coach Giovanni Solinas, who got hot under the collar this week when he was asked where exactly he was taking the Soweto club to with his continuing central-defence reshuffling.
The most astonishing statistic is that Chiefs are yet to lose a match when Solinas has paired Siyabonga Ngezana and Daniel Cardoso, the two players who have played most of Chiefs’ games this season.
Ngezana and Cardoso have (together) played six of Chiefs’ 10 league matches, winning two and drawing four.
Chiefs were also unbeaten in the two MTN8 matches that Cardoso and Ngezana played together before Solinas panicked and decided to bring in Teenage Hadebe for Cardoso in the second leg of the semifinal tie they lost against SuperSport United.
The Italian was in a tight spot this week as he tried to explain why he had dropped Cardoso in the last two league matches that Chiefs lost against Polokwane City in Durban and in the Soweto derby against Orlando Pirates last week.
In both those matches Cardoso was on the bench yet Solinas inexplicably said he fielded Mario Booysen in the derby because Cardoso had a gastric problem. But the question is why place Cardoso on the bench in a big match like the derby if he’s not good enough to play? What if Ngezana or Booysen got injured?
Solinas’s answer simply didn’t help him in shedding light as to what motivates his regular tinkering with his defence.
The right combination
Former Chiefs central defender Fabian McCarthy said he was also struggling to understand what Solinas was trying to do with the five defenders he has tried in central defence since he joined the club in July.
“I understand that he never had a preseason with the team but still the central defence or the defence as a whole is the last area you want to keep experimenting with,” said McCarthy, who formed a strong longterm partnership with Solinas’s assistant Patrick Mabedi a few years ago at Chiefs.
“It’s not good at all this chopping and changing at the back as it affects other key areas like (Itumeleng) Khune in goal and (Willard) Katsande in the central midfield.
“The main thing is to develop the understanding between the two centrebacks but how do you do that if there is a change all the time,” McCarthy wondered.
Matthew Booth, a former under 23 and Bafana Bafana centreback who played with McCarthy at international and club level, is also puzzled by Solinas’s reasoning on his central-defence pairing.
“I think people must appreciate that he had little influence in constructing the squad. But with regard to the centrebacks I think Ngezana has been very good, he’s one to look out for in the future,” said Booth.
“The question is who is suited to play with Ngezana. I would perhaps pair him with Cardoso for a period. But Solinas is probably still trying to find the right combinations not only in centrebacks but all over the field.”
It remains to be seen which central-defence pairing Solinas will prefer when Chiefs meet SuperSport United in the Telkom Knockout last 8 tie at the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban this afternoon. He can illafford to get things wrong in a match that could well determine his future at Naturena.