Arthur Zwane offers reasons for Chiefs’ poor season

In 27 years in the Premier Soccer League (PSL), Kaizer Chiefs never lost more than 10 league matches in a season.     

But in the 2022-2023 campaign that ended on Saturday, Arthur Zwane’s charges didn’t just break that record by one match when they lost 1-0 to SuperSport United in the penultimate round but extended it to 12 when Cape Town City beat Chiefs by the same margin at FNB Stadium.

With this terrible record still fresh in everyone’s mind, Zwane was asked if he was confident he would keep his job at Naturena. The way the coach attempted to answer the question was similar to the manner in which his team huffed and puffed all season.

Zwane noted his side showed some signs that they “wanted to compete” and he correctly admitted they never did. He pointed to the number of injuries Chiefs suffered, which is something that cannot earn a reprieve as it is a factor that affects all teams in any given season.

The excuses are untimely as they accompany Amakhosi completing an unprecedented eight seasons without a trophy.

But having endured a long debut season as a head coach, perhaps Zwane could be forgiven because the campaign might have left him dazed and confused considering how he hardly had a good enough team to help him change Chiefs’ fortunes.

“Look, I’m one person who is a believer and hard worker,” he said. “If there’s one thing football taught me, it is never to be in the game if you don’t have a big heart. In football you develop a thick skin. I’m not the first coach that’s been in this [under fire] situation.

“I've seen coaches struggling in their first season, then they come up different in the following season. But as I said, it was more like a learning season for me for the fact of me being the head [coach], making decisions, obviously with the help of other technical team members.

“But I’ve [previously] been a supporting member of the team, supporting other coaches who’ve been here before. This time around I had to do things the way I thought would help the team,” Zwane said.

“As much as it was a learning season, it was a very productive one in terms of learning that I should have done in [certain things] another way.”

Among factors Zwane pointed to as reasons for the poor season were injuries to Khama Billiat — who came in as a substitute on Saturday but left the field a few minutes later, injured again — Nkosingiphile Ngcobo and Keagan Dolly.