Kaizer Chiefs have earned a reputation as kings of unofficial competitions - sometimes mocked as 'plastic cups' - as they’ve bagged several Carling Black Label and Macufe trophies amid their seven-year drought of real honours.

Chiefs’ tendency of being world beaters in friendly competitions while they’ve been like a toothless bulldog in official tournaments is a topical subject again as they head into Carling Cup clash against bitter rivals Orlando Pirates at FNB Stadium on Saturday (12pm). 

While rival fans have always mocked the Amakhosi faithful that winning cups like this one is putting a curse on them reclaiming glory, the club's coach Arthur Zwane has begged to differ. Zwane has high hopes that winning Saturday’s four-team competition will lay the foundation for them to win official cups in the near future.

“I differ from those who say winning this kind of competition is a curse. When I was still a player we used to win the [Telkom] Charity Cup and Vodacom Cup [Vodacom Challenge] in a space of two, three weeks and then go all the way to win two [official] cups. These competitions are very important... they help us to see how balanced the squad is. Hopefully, we can build from the Carling Cup and win more cups in the coming months,” Zwane explained yesterday.

Zwane also implied their starting XI isn’t balanced as their fans left both right-backs – Reeve Frosler and Dillan Solomons – out of it, highlighting they’ll improvise. In the absence of a regular right-back in the line-up, versatile Njabulo Blom, who’s been playing as a central midfielder, becomes an obvious choice to slot at right-back while centre-back Njabulo Ngcobo is likely to play as a holding midfielder. Eric Mathoho could be paired with Dove Edmilson at the heart of defence.

“It comes with the element of improvisation because we have to see how we can balance the team. The reason we attended coaching courses as coaches is for that, to have that ability to see things and come up with a plan. We can’t call ourselves tacticians when we can’t even plan, so that [deploying Blom at right-back] might be an option for us,” Zwane stated.