Individual quality cost the Amakhosi says Chiefs assistant coach

Smiso Msomi

Kaizer Chiefs assistant coach Khalil Ben Youssef believes the club’s inconsistencies this season have been down to a pile-up of misfortunes against them.

Amakhosi suffered a fifth league defeat at the hands of Golden Arrows on Sunday at the Moses Mabhida Stadium, putting a dent in the club’s ambitions of finishing in a CAF Confederation Cup spot.

The Glamour Boys were guilty of missing close to five clear-cut goal-scoring opportunities in the match before a Gladwin Shitolo second-half strike proved decisive in a 1-0 Arrows triumph.

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The likes of Mduduzi Shabalala, Bradley Cross and most notably Ranga Chivaviro failed to capitalise on what had been a good 60-minute showing by Chiefs, and opened the door to an upset. In the 13 games they’ve played, the Amakhosi have won five, drawn three and lost five, and they currently sit sixth on the Premiership standings.

Speaking to the media after the game – after Chiefs head coach Nasreddine Nabi received a red card after the final whistle for complaining to the referee about the amount of stoppage time that was played – Youssef expressed that side were just unfortunate to not convert their chances, and that has been their story so far this season.

“We are unlucky because opponents get one chance to score and they use it. But for us, we get five or six chances to score, and our expected goals are more than one, and that’s our problem,” he said.

“Our game model makes us create a lot of situations, but in the last third, that’s individual quality.”

Chiefs have kept just one clean sheet in the league this season, and have conceded the second-most goals in the division.

The Moroccan-born mentor played off the side’s defensive frailties, and stated how he and the rest of the technical team planned to work the holistic vision.

“In football, there’s no defensive and offensive. There are situations when you have the ball, when you don’t have the ball, when you lose the ball and when you recover the ball – and every day, we have to prepare for all of this,” he explained.

“We don’t just focus on defence or attack. If we played like that and the opponents had a lot of chances to score, I would be worried – but that’s not the case. I would just say we are unlucky.”

The frustrations on the day spread out onto the technical team as well, and led to Nabi getting sent off in the tunnel after remonstrating with the referee.

Youssef shed light on some of the issues that led to Nabi seeing red and referee Olani Kwinda, who was the man in the middle to eventually flash a red card.

“Normally in football, if you make substitutions, it’s supposed to be 30 seconds. They made five substitutions, we made five, so you can tally up those minutes,” he said.

“He went to the referee to ask how they made all of those substitutions and used that strategy to win the time, because they went down with every challenge and he gave only three minutes – it was supposed to be a minimum of five minutes.

“We’ve played 12 games now (before Arrows) and it’s been over five minutes. We feel like he tried to help the opponents.”