From the ecstasy of beating Orlando Pirates we have been reduced to sadness and tears as we exit the Coca-Cola Cup and now contemplate what might have been. Turning to Sunday’s defeat at the hands of Jomo Cosmos where do you start to pick the bones after a game where we knew what the threats from the opposition would be and we did not prevent the opposition from playing to their strengths. During our pre match discussions with the team on Saturday we made it clear that this game is not won and that our victory over Pirates meant nothing in the context of the Cosmos game.

We went down early on and taking into account Patrick Mabedi’s experience as a player he should have dealt with Diallo earlier and been able to coming on this outside and tackle him before he reached the eighteen yard box. Patrick made and initial mistake, his experience came through and he played well for the rest of the game after that. Once we were a goal down we still created chances and had balls cleared off the line we hit the post and Thabo Mooki had a well-taken free kick superbly stopped.

Take nothing away from Cosmos it was clear they had a game plan, which we were aware of and they stuck to their guns, which ultimately paid off for them. Sunday’s game was one that we should have won by a 4-2 or 3-2 score line, if one looks at the statistics you will notice that we had 14 shots at goal and Cosmos had four. Our corner count was 12 to four so if you look at those statistics we should be making at least forty percent of our chances count and we could have still won the game.

We do have a serious goal scoring problem, Louis Agyemang showed good signs yesterday I thought he had a good game and shielded the ball well and played a nice game of possession football. The gauntlet has been thrown down to him and although one does not like to put pressure on a player Louis understands that he needs to start hitting the back of the net more often. In the second half of Sunday’s game Cosmos had seven players doing man marking jobs which was very clever, with that we were still able to create chance after chance and could not change the score board.

A sad turning point for us was David Obua’s sending off which was totally worthless and placed us under unnecessary of pressure, he knew and all the players were aware that the opposition would provoke us. Fight back on the field of play and show the opposition you are stronger than the words they can throw at you. David had a talk with me and I have told him that since I have been at Chiefs Sunday was probably one of the performance he would be better off forgetting. Another factor for his indifferent performance could be that was still up in the clouds after scoring the previous week against Pirates, the media were hounding him all week for interviews and he should have been more focused on Cosmos.

With the Coca-Cola Cup now out of the way we have the league in front of us and we will be putting all our energy into the league. We have an important couple of games starting with Silver Stars on the 16th included in our programme is a game against

Pirates and host of others which we need to gain maximum points from. Our hope is to put together a string of victories, which will put us ahead in the title race when December comes around and than we will be able to cement our position early next year and retain our league title. Our biggest problem at the moment is the lack of a real goal scorer for now we will continue working with our players in getting the ball into the back of the net and in January we will sign another striker who will have to be a South African player as we have our full quota of foreign players.

Ernst Middendorp


Kaizer Chiefs Head Coach