What a difference a year makes. At this stage last season, Kaizer Chiefs had won four cups in a run that culminated in their victory in the continental Mandela Cup.
This term, they could not defend their BP Top 8 title or the Mandela Cup, and last week lost their Coca-Cola Cup in unfortunate but needlessly acrimonious circumstances. They are trophyless and outside the top 10 in the league.
Given that their decline set in a year and ago this week with a 3-2 loss to Supersport United, Chiefs may try to achieve symmetry and hope that this weekend is when their rise begins. And that has to be against arch-rivals Orlando Pirates in a league fixture on Saturday.
The first thing the giants have to do is to restore lustre to South Africa’s premier football fixture. It is as if the match is stifled by expectations.
The Soweto derby runs the risk of being overtaken by the Pirates vs Sundowns clash in terms of pure entertainment value. That fixture has lived up to its buzz and on the past three occasions has produced scintillating football and nine goals with 3-0 and 3-1 victories for Sundowns last season and a 2-0 win for Pirates earlier this year.
In the most recent Soweto derby clashes, Pirates did not meet with sufficient resistance from Chiefs in last year’s 3-0 victory. Earlier, at Ellis Park, a promising exchange was crushed along with 43 lives.
It is time to restore order on and off the field.
In last week’s Coca-Cola Cup final, Amakhosi supporters lost the plot completely. For a team that has benefited more than most from bad refereeing decisions, the fans’ disgust was incredibly smug and hypocritical.
Against Sundowns in the now- defunct Rothman’s Cup and last season’s BP Top 8, as well as against Ajax en route to last week’s final, Chiefs profited from human errors.
The law of averages demands that, over time, decisions for you cancel out those against you.
On Thursday afternoon, the process of assessing guilt and deciding punishment was due to get under way. Already, there are voices calling for acid-burn harshness.
On Monday’s Soccerzone TV show, viewers were asked to decide, using a yes or no, whether Chiefs should be made to play their remaining home fixtures behind closed doors.
That is an extreme suggestion motivated by petty jealousy and an inferiority complex from living in the shadow of a giant.
All it would do is kill off what little support exists for football. Imagine if Chiefs’ supporters decided to boycott away fixtures? Smaller teams would feel the revenue loss. It would also remove the buzz that is transmitted by a large crowd — even on television — and turn even more people away.
At worst, Chiefs must be made to play a limited number — say, three — of home games without spectators. They must also be fined a huge amount, with a substantial suspended component depending on the future behaviour of their fans.
Lest it be forgotten, at last year’s game against Pirates, Chiefs fans resorted to bottle-throwing antics after Pirates’ second goal. When no lives are lost, the crime is forgotten.
The fans would do well to behave and spur their team on against a Pirates side loaded with talent and confidence.
Pirates enter the fray slightly wounded after last week’s league defeat by Wits, which pierced their aura of invincibility and ended a run of six straight wins.
Two men who know a lot about the derby will lead Chiefs. Club legends Doctor Khumalo and Ace Khuse find themselves coach and assistant respectively, following a string of indifferent results that saw Muhsin Ertugral being given indefinite leave.
If you had told Khumalo a year ago that he would coach Chiefs in a derby, he proclaims, ”I would have told you that is crazy.” But the Doctor had prescribed good medicine: the loss against Cosmos last week was his first in five games.
”I think the change of scenario and helping players to relax and express themselves has helped,” he says. Khumalo has no formal coaching qualifications and is adopting a wait-and-see approach to whether coaching will be new a terrain to conquer.
The best way to motivate his team could be to show them a video of the 1990 Castle Challenge Cup, where he created two quick goals for Khuse and Fani Madida to settle the matter. The trouble is that today the club lacks prolific finishers.
Goals are more likely to come from midfielders Stanton Fredericks and Jabu Pule than from the five strikers who seem perpetually injured. The chief culprit among these is Kenny Niemach. The story of his career has been to arrive with a bang and then cool down — a pattern established at Sundowns and now with Chiefs.