Chiefs eye Arrows after romp in Cup
Sibongiseni Gumbi
And now for Golden Arrows – this was embattled Kaizer Chiefs coach Giovanni Solinas’ reaction after guiding Amakhosi to a 4-0 win in a Caf Confederations Cup preliminary round first leg against Zanzibar club Zimamoto FC on Wednesday night at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium.
Chiefs meet Abafana Bes’thende at Durban’s Princess Magogo Stadium at 6pm tomorrow, and Solinas will be hoping for more of the same as they seek to start climbing up the Absa Premiership table. Solinas will hope Wednesday night’s win will be the boost his team need as they have not been doing well on the domestic front – they have only won two of their last five games in domestic competition.
“It was good to score four goals and not concede,” Solinas said in a post-match interview after a Khama Billiat hat trick had propelled Chiefs to victory. Amakhosi are sixth in the Absa Premiership with 18 points from 13 games and trail leaders Orlando Pirates by five.
“Now we focus on the next game because we have a very important game against Golden Arrows. We need to focus on it now,” added Solinas who did himself no favours by losing to Pirates twice in the space of three weeks, first in the league and then in the Telkom Knockout semifinals.
The Italian is likely to bring out the big guns he rested for the Zimamoto match, which he played without regulars Itumeleng Khune, George Maluleka and Ramaphlwe Mphahlele. But he will be happy that some of the fringe players who were given their chance played well, such as Kabelo Mahlasela.
But when asked about Mahlasela’s performance on the night, Solinas didn’t seem too impressed with the 27-year-old. “Mahlasela is an offensive player, he is very fast. But he needs to understand the manner in which he can exploit his speed.
“We started the match with him to teach him to play on the wing,” said Solinas.
Chiefs travel to Zanzibar for the return leg on Tuesday.
This has been the most glorious week in Banyana Banyana’s history, with the national women’s team qualifying for next year’s Fifa Women’s World Cup in France, a 2-0 win over Mali on Tuesday in the semifinals of the 2018 Caf Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (AWC) sealing the deal. It is the first time Banyana have qualified for the World Cup, and right at the forefront of their success has been Thembi Kgatlana, who netted her fifth goal of South Africa’s AWC campaign to settle the nerves in Accra. Kgatlana’s shot was slightly scuffed, but sneaked past the Mali goalkeeper.
Kaizer Chiefs lost another Soweto derby to Orlando Pirates on Saturday, going down in the Telkom Knockout semifinals, in what was a particularly poor day for Mario Booysen. The Chiefs central defender is not having the best of times this season and made a poor error, failing to intercept a long ball, which allowed Vincent Pule to set up Thembinkosi Lorch for Pirates’ opener in a 2-1 win. Booysen also failed to convert a couple of excellent chances, notably in the final seconds when his point-blank header was stopped by Jackson Mabokgwane. Booysen was relegated to the bench when Chiefs played in the Caf Confederation Cup on Wednesday night.