After a year away from the game, Jeff Butler has returned to coach Kaizer Chiefs
SOCCER: Lungile Madywabe
WITH eight weeks to go before the end of the season, the deadline for the registration of players in NSL teams has come and gone.
Kaizer Chiefs were reported to be interested in the services of Ernest Makhanya and Harold Legodi to boost their sagging line-up. But that never materialised and instead, to the relief of many Chiefs diehards, they regained the services of Jeff Butler, replacing caretaker Trott Moloto as new coach of the once “mighty” Kaizer Chiefs. Chiefs have been without a coach for two months since the departure of Augusto Palacios.
Palacios failed to revitalise the often out-of-touch “Amakhosi”. and “messiah” Butler has been appointed to look into this state of affairs. Chiefs are currently lying third in the league.
Butler’s previous tenure with Chiefs ended on a high note when he won a league and Bob Save Super Bowl double with them. But the Chiefs he had then were different to the team he is in charge of now. “They sold most of their players overseas, while their rivals spent their money buying international players. Look at Sundowns, they have Sizwe Motaung, Linda Buthelezi, they spent more than a million buying,” says Butler.
He has no contract with Chiefs and his services will be reviewed at the end of the season. Butler says being out of soccer for 12 months — he was banned for allegedly spitting at the referee during a match against Vita Sports Club of Zaire when he was coach of Sundowns — has drained his appetite for the game.
Another problem is that he is disillusioned about the state of the game here. “Everything stems from the structure. It was better a few years ago, but now the South African Football Association (Safa) is directing all its energy to the national team. It is overplayed and oversponsored,” he says.
Butler has no illusions about the task at hand, saying that the team he has at the moment is for the future. And the future is next year. A point Chiefs supremo Kaizer Motaung agrees with: “The fact that we have a relatively young team means we are looking at the future. We will salvage whatever we can this year. The league might be a bit far, but we will fight to win the Bob Save.”
Butler believes his primary role for now is “to assess and make some recommendations for next year”. But he acknowleges that the “public is not interested in what would be”. In an attempt to address the spectators’ expectations, his immediate plan “is to finish as high as possible in the league, but if you want to be realistic look at 1996”.
But he will be doing his best to win every game, starting with the encounter against Sundowns in the last 16 of the Bob Save knockout this weekend.
And he says he will also work very hard towards improving the maturity of the team.
Despite his 15 years experience in African football, Safa is not asking for his advice. Not that he is bitter about it, but he feels “in a business you have to learn by peoples’ experience”.