Kaizer Chiefs acting head coach Cavin Johnson has blamed the club’s embarrassing elimination from the Nedbank Cup to Motsepe Foundation side Milford FC on the missed chances and lack of co-ordination in their play.
Chiefs, who have made a habit of losing to lower division teams in this competition over the years, bombed out of the Ke Yona tournament in the last 32 stage last night at FNB stadium, as they lost 5-4 on penalties to the KwaZulu-Natal based club.Johnson says their dominant performance against the 10-man Milford counts for nothing.
“Not good at the office for Kaizer Chiefs, I thought we had probably 89% possession of the game.”
‘We played against a team that set-back the whole game, and from the first whilst I thought we had 4 clear chances – but went on to miss the penalty. There were so many moments in the game where we didn’t dominate correctly, we then lost it on penalties,” said Johnson.
This was Chiefs’ last realistic hope of winning some silverware this season and this elimination in the first round of the last knockout trophy this season – means that they will now extend their trophy drought to nine seasons, having last tasted some success back in the 2014/2015 season.
Johnson described the team’s dressing room after this loss.”Like they always say, you try and play until the fat lady sings and today she sang for the opposition, it is not a good pill to swallow now – we made sure we wanted to maintain our record in this particular cup but it was not to be. We will have to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves and play for the league. If I were to invite you to my change room you’d see a lot of sad boys,” added Jonson.
Johnson, who earlier in the week told SABC Sport that they didn’t strengthen the team in the recent transfer window because he felt he had a good team and needed to work with them, looks at what cost them in this particular game.
Teen sensation Mfundo Vilakazi was thrown into the deep end to make his debut at the Premier Soccer League (PSL) level as Chiefs tried to look for some creativity in the midfield. Johnson felt that the 18 year-old did fairly well in his first game, despite the result.
”I thought Mfundo came and he did quite well. For a young player who came on and I put him in a really pressure game, I didn’t think he lost the ball.”He’s got a bright future with Kaizer Chiefs, unfortunately today he was not able to show his real qualities, which I thought could have come had we scored a goal, then you would have seen how good he is at moving the ball. He did very well for me,” he concluded.
(story credit: SABC Sport)
