NKARENG MATSHE | Chiefs may have taken a short in the dark with Ntseki

Kaizer Chiefs’ handling of the coaching situation at the club this off-season has been nothing short of bizarre, and that’s truly disappointing for a side known for a high professional ethic. 

As speculation abounded over the future of Arthur Zwane and names were thrown around, the club remained silent, triggering uncertainty among its unsettled fan base, which has now taken the appointment of Molefi Ntseki with pure scorn and denigration.

It’s unfair on Ntseki, one of the true gentlemen of the game, that he’s pilloried before he even takes charge of his first match, but admittedly he’s not helped by a thin-bare CV which Chiefs' fans rightfully feel doesn’t measure up to the challenges the club faced over nearly a decade of drought.

Most unhelpful to Ntseki has been how his elevation from head of development to head coach has been handled. Until Wednesday afternoon’s “breaking news” which confirmed Ntseki, Chiefs had not said a word on the coaching post after the final whistle of the previous term, where they backed Zwane unequivocally despite evidence that his first season was littered with glaring errors which stemmed mainly from inexperience.

Instead of conceding they had made another mistake when appointing a coach, Chiefs merely sprang the Ntseki surprise on their notoriously edgy fan base. 

At the time of writing, there hadn’t been any explanation, or admission of fault, regarding Zwane’s demotion from head coach to assistant just a year after we had been told he was the right person to lead the club’s project to return to glory. What went wrong, a year on? Why was Zwane suddenly not the man whom management spoke so glowingly of amid the fans’ impatience as the club laboured to another trophyless season that also brought the dismay of 12 league defeats? A caring management would have come out to say 'sorry, we may have erred on Zwane'.

The way this was handled was reminiscent of the misguided appointment of Giovanni Solinas in 2018, just a week or so before the season started. Then, Chiefs similarly went underground while it was clear they required a coach after Steve Komphela had been booted out three months earlier. Lo and behold, Chiefs’ long search produced the clueless Solinas, who unsurprisingly proved completely out of depth and consequently sacked five months into the season.

Despite misgivings from the Chiefs' fans and legends, Ntseki is no Solinas. He has had a two-year look-in into the situation at Naturena, since he got there in 2021. He’s also a local who’s familiar with the demands at Chiefs and, more positively, has been credited in his previous jobs as a shrewd manager who knows how to nurture talent.

But Ntseki is definitely not a long-term solution. He’s another panic hiring, picked because Chiefs couldn't get their initial targets, and that the season is about to start, not because he’s seen as some panacea to Amakhosi’s myriad of challenges. He could yet prove a wise choice, but that he couldn’t deliver the last time he was similarly elevated as a last-minute option – when Safa replaced Stuart Baxter as Bafana Bafana coach in 2019 – could weigh heavily against him.

Ntseki oversaw a disastrous Africa Cup of Nations qualifying where Bafana succumbed to a damaging defeat in the last match in Sudan, when a draw would have sufficed. Hardly a story to lift Chiefs' fans demoralised by eight years of decline.

More dejection could be bred by a management which makes haphazard decisions, as if to say all problems at Chiefs start – and end – at the coach’s door. Zwane obviously was made aware that the boots were too big for him, but telling the fans otherwise while you are rummaging through hundreds of CVs and panic-calling agents is a bit deceitful.