Kaizer Chiefs’ debut in SuperSport’s documentary series was always going to draw attention. The club’s run to the 2025 Nedbank Cup offered a compelling story: a decade without a trophy, a difficult season, a comeback against Mamelodi Sundowns and a final against Orlando Pirates.
The episode revisited those moments. It also left out one of the central figures in them.
Nasreddine Nabi’s name was not mentioned by the players. There was no interview with him, no picture and no footage of him directing the team that beat Pirates 2-1 in the final. For an episode centred on the end of Chiefs’ 10-year trophy drought, that was difficult to overlook.
And this was no ordinary cup run. Chiefs overturned a 1-0 deficit against Sundowns in the semi-finals, ending a 12-match winless sequence against their opponents. In the final, they beat a Pirates side that had won the previous two editions of the competition under José Riveiro. Those results gave Amakhosi supporters a rare moment of celebration in a season that had brought plenty of frustration.
Nabi was the head coach through that run. That is a basic fact of the story, regardless of how his tenure is assessed or how his relationship with Chiefs management later ended.
The documentary was made after his departure, and it is reasonable to ask whether that affected the prospect of a new interview. But an interview is only one way to include someone. The matches were filmed. So were the celebrations. Was there no footage of Nabi preparing the team, speaking to players or reacting on the touchline? Or speaking during a post-match interview after winning the trophy? If it exists, its absence from an episode about the cup triumph is an editorial choice worth questioning.
Khalil Ben Youssef featured prominently and spoke about the team’s journey. He was an important part of the technical staff, as was Cédric Kaze. Their accounts belong in the documentary. But the way the story was presented could leave a viewer unfamiliar with that season wondering who had actually been in charge.
It is possible to recognise the assistants’ work and still establish where they stood in the coaching structure. Indeed, that context would have made their contributions clearer. Instead, Nabi’s complete absence became increasingly noticeable as the episode went on. Even the players did not mention him by name.
The omission inevitably draws attention to his exit from the club. Nabi had publicly pressed for better-quality players, making his views on the squad clear while he was still in charge. Later, a dispute over his coaching credentials surfaced ahead of Chiefs’ CAF Confederation Cup trip to Angola. The relationship broke down, and he left. Ben Youssef and Kaze remained with the team.
Given how Nabi’s time at Chiefs ended, his absence was bound to raise questions. We know he was not approached for an interview. What we do not know is who decided to leave him out, what archive footage was available, or whether Chiefs had any say in the final edit.
But viewers can judge what appeared on screen. A documentary about one of Chiefs’ most significant victories in recent years managed to tell that story without showing or naming the head coach.
Nabi’s record at Chiefs should not be romanticised. Their league performances under him were inconsistent, and the Nedbank Cup did not resolve every concern about the team. Those shortcomings are part of the record too. An honest documentary could have acknowledged them while showing how the same coach and his staff guided Chiefs through the cup.
Nor was the victory Nabi’s alone. The players had to recover against Sundowns and deliver against Pirates. Ben Youssef, Kaze and the rest of the staff played their parts. But those contributions do not require the head coach to disappear from the account.
That is what makes the episode’s treatment of the triumph so curious. Chiefs have moved on from Nabi, as football clubs do. Their documentary, however, was looking back at a moment that took place while he was in charge. The distance between the club and its former coach may explain the questions now being asked. It cannot change who was on the bench when the trophy drought ended.
By leaving him out so completely, the episode drew more attention to Nabi than a few seconds of archive footage might have done.