Derby postmortem: Kaizer Chiefs are better, but still off the pace

You can’t put a plaster on a broken leg and expect it to heal.

This season, Kaizer Chiefs did at least apply a bandage and for a spell it seemed the long-ailing Soweto giants were on the mend — to some, cautious extent — from their decade of poor performance that saw them end a 10-year trophyless spell with last season’s Nedbank Cup.

After Chiefs fired Tunisian Nasreddine Nabi, who oversaw the 2024-25 Nedbank final victory over Pirates in Durban, in September amid mediocre league form, his young assistants — Burundian Cedric Kaze and Tunisian Khalil Ben Youssef — got Amakhosi firing in some of their best form in years. They led the league at one stage in the first half of the season and seemed headed for the Caf Confederation Cup knockout stage.

But four losses in five matches — compounded by a worst Soweto derby result in 25 years with Saturday’s 3-0 defeat to Orlando Pirates at FNB Stadium — and a slip from being ensconced in the Betway Premiership’s top three for the first half of the season to fifth place, 11 points off the pace from leaders Bucs, has exposed cracks.

Among their losses was a 2-1 turnaround against Zamalek in Egypt that saw Chiefs out of the Confed in their last group stage hurdle.

Two defeats against Gavin Hunt’s tough Stellenbosch FC saw Amakhosi out of the Nedbank Cup in the last 32 and a league loss dented their Premiership hopes as much as the derby setback.

Chiefs are better than in their previous two poor league seasons, where they finished 10th and ninth. While their mini-slump of the last three weeks has seen them lose ground in what was always a long shot of a title race, they possess a more exciting squad than for some time, after finally showing signs of ambition in the transfer market.

The hole they are in is deep, though, and the last few weeks have shown there is still some way to climb. Amakhosi, led by football director Kaizer Motaung Jr, still need more ambition in decision-making and appointments to regain their place as a genuine top three club.

Pirates have been winners of seven domestic cups in four seasons after their own six-year barren spell, runners-up in the league the past three campaigns under Jose Riveiro, and in 2025-26 really giving eight-time successive Premiership champions Mamelodi Sundowns a title scare.

They have never lost sight of the need to make ambitious signings in each transfer window and Spaniard Riveiro’s painstaking building of a squad that can challenge for the league title has been continued under Moroccan successor Abdeslam Ouaddou, who has the ammunition to mount a real challenge.

There was a gulf in class of overall squad strength visible on Saturday. Oswin Appollis’s quality, alone, making so much of Bucs’ play from the wing and scoring the crucial second in the 39th minute to Tshepang Moremi’s fifth-minute deflected opener, spoke volumes for a difference in star quality.

The last time Chiefs lost a derby 3-0 was in December 2001, when Bucs coach Jean Yves-Kerjean steered his team to a convincing win at FNB over Muhsin Ertugral’s Amakhosi thanks to a brace from Lesley Manyathela and third from Benedict Vilakazi.

Kaze was left having to apologise to the fans. He had to admit it just about all went wrong for Chiefs from out of the starting blocks. He said the technical staff emphasised the need to be “alive, active and on the front foot in the first 15 minutes”, but his team instead conceded the “short corner” that led to Moremi’s early opener. From there Chiefs were under “a lot of pressure” as a confident and dominant Pirates aggressively bossed the exchanges.

Kaze felt Chiefs showed signs of trying to come back into the clash in the opening exchanges from the break, but Pirates could absorb pressure — the Amakhosi coach alleging they used “tricks”, “every minute someone falling down” — and bided their time until substitute Evidence Makgopa’s final nail blow in the 79th.

Chiefs will hope the recent slump does not dent a fragile confidence at Naturena, where players, technical staff and the administration are under pressure to restore the glory days. Kaze said the co-coaches will aim to get the side back to basics to halt a further slide and bring back positive results.

“I believe the only way to bounce back is to work. I told the players, ‘Now we have a very big debt to our fans — the only way to redeem ourselves is to pick up points in the next games’,” he said.

“It’s to go there and show that what happened today was an accident.”

Asked if calls for a change in coaching staff are warranted, the co-coach said: “I would not answer that because that’s not up to me, but I believe the coaches are here because they are trusted by the management.

“It’s true we have had a series of bad results. But I believe there are things that have worked in the past few months that we need to remind ourselves and the players about. Look at the first half of the league and come back to the basics of football.

“Three weeks ago we were on a very good run, but in the last three weeks I would say we were starting to get into a very dangerous moment and we need to pick our heads up and to have players who are leaders who show up and show the way.”

Kaze was asked if Chiefs’ league title hopes are over. His answer was blunt.

“I would say it’s more complicated than before, thank you.”

That to-the-point sentence about sums it up. Chiefs cannot win silverware again in 2025-26. Their fans believe the club should forget about half-measure patch-ups and just pay up to bring Pitso Mosimane to fix the club. The co-coaches will try to salvage what they can from the remainder of this season. Then Chiefs will have more crossroads to negotiate and tough decisions to make.