Opposition Counter-attack

This involves the opposition winning the ball in their own half, and launching a fast break to exploit the Chiefs team being out of shape on transition. This involved a short time between winning the ball and scoring the goal.

These goals conceded are particularly hard to take for the Soweto giants, with two counters conceded in the last two matches. Over the course of the season, five counter-attack goals have been conceded and a similar theme emerges: Chiefs’ fullbacks overcommit and are often both caught up field at the same time. Frosler is particularly guilty of being too high and then showing nowhere near enough intensity to sprint back into position. He has also been beaten too easily in oneversus-one actions this season. Philani Zulu is another who does not recover quickly enough. He was slow to track Jose Ali Meza for Maritzburg United’s goal on the break in early March and for Gaston Sirino’s goal last weekend, he was slow to track the Uruguayan and ended up going to close down the same player as Daniel Cardoso in Gift Motupa. The ways to improve this for next season is to become much better at counter-pressing – closing down as soon as the ball is lost to either win it back, give away a foul or force the opposition back. There have been some good performances in that area this season, but also one goal they conceded against Orlando Pirates where they were late to their challenges, Bucs broke down the left, Paseka Mako easily dribbled past Frosler and set up Siphesihle Ndlovu to score. Pirates only had 10 men on the pitch for that goal too as Thabang Monare was receiving treatment for an injury! The other area to improve is in their “rest defence” – i.e. their structure when on the attack in preparation for losing the ball. Komphela can often be heard screaming on the sideline for Sundowns for them to correct their rest defence set-up with more men in a position to defend an inevitable counter-attack. Chiefs desperately lack a defensive midfielder who can protect his zone like Rivaldo Coetzee tends to do so well. Whilst Njabulo Blom is a great young player, he is better at hunting the ball higher up, which leaves a big hole in front of the backline.