Chiefs have resources, why not use them?

If Kaizer Chiefs end this season without any silverware – which would be a scandalous fourth season in a row – the club’s management will have to come out and take the blame.

Their decisions in recent years in terms of technical team appointments have caused this mess they find themselves in. It is scandalous for a club as big as Chiefs and with the resources and financial muscle they have to go for so long without winning anything of value.

They built the club on the premise that it is a cup-winning side who want to haul in everything on sight and it worked, earning them a myriad faithful supporters who go out in numbers and buy the club merchandise all year round. They were the trendsetters and were the first local club to have their own village.

As a young man growing up in KZN it was one of my dreams to see the Naturena Village which was so gloriously spoken of even though I was a Moroka Swallows fan. But I digress.

I believe they held on to former coach Steve Komphela for longer than they needed to. I like Komphela, he is a fantastic coach, but they should have done something either to support him or relieve him of the pressure when he got knocked out of the MTN8 in his third season.

Oh, I forget. They did hire a “technical advisor” but again they went for a man whose CV left a lot to be desired. It was like they went and got a former pre-school teacher to be a subject advisor to a Grade 12 mathematics teacher. They were so ashamed of their hiring of the guy that they didn’t even properly announce it when he left.

They left it too late. Okay, to be

Sibongiseni Gumbi

fair, they honoured their commitment to Komphela who was the first local coach at Naturena in a long while. Maybe they looked at it from a marketing side of things, that is if they acted too quickly, they would be accused of being hasty especially after chairman Kaizer Motaung had said a few years earlier that no local coach would ever be good enough to guide Amakhosi.

But it was clear that something was amiss. Something was not working. And Komphela’s record showed he had never won any silverware at club level. He does however have a tremendous record in terms of finding raw talent and polishing them into a world- class players. The players he found are too many to mention.

But coaches are different and some are not really into winning as much as they should. They are more content with developing the local game in terms of upskilling the players. And then there are those, like Pitso Mosimane and Wedson Nyirenda, who want to win things at all costs.

Okay, I digress again. After Komphela was forced out by fans who resorted to violent conduct to show their frustration, they had a chance to get a man who would get them back to that winning mentality they were once known for.

Surely, they had already started – or should have started – looking for a new coach even before Komphela resigned because it was clear it would go against the club’s ambitions to exercise their option on Komphela’s contract having been in the game for long.

But what did they do? After taking their precious time to make a decision, they went for Giovanni Solinas’ accent and command of English as much more interesting than his CV. And players have either in corners, or like Daniel Cardoso did, publicly said the six months the Italian spent at Naturena was a waste of time and energy. From his man-management to coaching styles, he was a complete flop.

I must admit I had my reservations when they recalled Ernst Middendorp after Solinas left, but he seems to have found a workable formula. What’s unfortunate is that he shoulders the responsibility of avoiding an unwanted record of four years without a trophy in just six months.