Zwane and Sheppard will be on Chiefs’ bench, says Baxter

Arthur Zwane and Dillon Sheppard will remain on the bench as the dual assistant coaches to Stuart Baxter, Kaizer Chiefs head coach confirmed ahead of his team’s MTN8 season-opener against Mamelodi Sundowns on Sunday.

Baxter also confirmed that goalkeeper-coach Lee Baxter resumed his duties this week after travelling to Sweden last week, where his wife gave birth to a boy. Chiefs head of technical, Molefi Ntseki, will watch from the stands.

Zwane and Sheppard, who steered Chiefs to wins in their past two Premiership matches to scrape an eighth-placed finish and entry into the MTN8, remain on the bench. The duo also steered Chiefs through a 1-0 aggregate shock victory over Wydad Casablanca in the Caf Champions League semifinals.

“In terms of the bench, I think that we’ve worked on the assumption that Arthur and Dillon will be on the bench, and Molefi stays in touch with us from the stands,” Baxter said.

“Because I believe it’s good to have a good pair of eyes looking at that different angle, who comes down at halftime and gives us his take on things, and then we work out the tactical changes if they need to be done at the break.”

The technical staff has an interesting makeup and synergy. Baxter, in his second stint at the club, had Ntseki as his assistant when Bafana reached the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations quarterfinals shocking hosts Egypt in the second round.

Ntseki, appointed to Chiefs’ new position of head of technical and the academy in late May, succeeded Baxter as Bafana head coach, and had Amakhosi’s former development coach Zwane as his national assistant, who also still worked for Chiefs at the time.