No honeymoon for Nasreddine Nabi and his crew at Kaizer Chiefs

Jeff Butler, Ted Dumitru, Muhsin Ertugral, Paul Dolezar —  these are among foreign coaches who came as unknowns to South Africa and made their names at Kaizer Chiefs. 

Of the four, Butler and Dumitru, both late, were the most successful, as they won a combined five league titles (1989, 1991, 1992, 2003-2004, 2004-2005) for the Naturena-based club.

Some even argue that Chiefs last played “their football” in 2005 when they were coached by the Romanian-born Dumitru.

So, when Tunisian tactician Nasreddine Nabi finally arrives at Naturena some time this week after guiding AS FAR Rabat for the last time in Morocco’s Throne Cup against Raja Casablanca tomorrow night, he will be hard-pressed to bring the kind of stability and success Butler and Dumitru had with Amakhosi.

Nabi’s takeover is quite unique in that he is not arriving alone as Butler and Dumitru did all those years ago. However, in line with current coaching trends, Chiefs have allowed the 58-year-old to bring five of his trusted technical men with two — Fernando Da Cruz (assistant) and Ilyes Mzoughi (goalkeeper coach) —already working with the team this week. Khalil Ben Yousesef (2nd assistant), Ayman Makroud (video analyst) and Madji Safi (fitness coach) will complete Nabi’s team. 

But why are Chiefs making these unprecedented wholesale changes to their technical team at this point in time? They’re the first team to do so in South Africa.

Well, Chiefs’ struggles in the past nine years, during which they won no trophies despite hiring as many as eight mentors, are well documented. There are a couple of pressing reasons why Chiefs might want to see Nabi hit the road running as soon he arrives at Naturena.

Chiefs will celebrate their 55th anniversary in January, and winning the Carling Knockout Cup may be a good start for Nabi, who will have a couple of months to adapt before that competition starts towards the end of the year. 

Chiefs founder and owner Kaizer Motaung is turning 80 in October, and having seen his side floundering in recent years, winning one or two trophies will do the old man a world of good.

But does Chiefs have a squad good enough to help Nabi achieve an easy landing?

That’s a bit complicated, as Nabi — who won the Tanzanian Premier League with Young Africans in 2022 and 2023 — will be new to almost all the players he will work with at Chiefs.

Those close to the situation at Naturena say Nabi started a while ago assessing the kind of players Chiefs have, and he may have had a hand in letting go of Keagan Dolly, Siyethemba Sithebe, Njabulo Ngcobo and Sifiso Hlanti after their contracts expired this week.

Nabi is said to have worked wonders with a limited squad of around 25 players at Yanga, the club he was unlucky to see finishing as runners-up in the Caf Confederation Cup in 2022-2023. 

With Hlanti gone, Chiefs probably need to sign up more than one left-back; and two centre-backs may be required with Ngcobo and the late Luke Fluers no longer part of the squad.

Dolly’s departure may require Chiefs to get a decent No 10, and there might be a need for one or two strikers — which means Chiefs will have to sign around five players before the start of the 2024-2025 campaign.

“Remember Chiefs signed more than 10 players before the start of last season, and we paid for six of those. There’s no money nor a need to sign as many as that this season. The new coach (Nabi) is not coming cheap with his crew,” said an insider at Naturena. 

Polokwane City’s exciting winger Oswin Appollis (22) may come as a good long-term replacement for Dolly. Appollis will not come cheap, as his stock has risen quickly following the trust shown in him by Bafana Bafana coach Hugo Broos in recent months. 

“There has been lots of interest in Oswin, and we’re currently assessing various options. He is contracted to Polokwane, so any interested parties would need to engage with his club first,” his agent Glyn Binkin told the Sunday Times yesterday.

But whether Appollis is there or not to boost the Chiefs squad, Nabi will be under immense pressure from day one to bring joy at Naturena. That Chiefs will not be part of the MTN8 as they finished 10th last season — their lowest standing in the PSL era — will give him and his crew a few months to assess the whole situation. 

Will it be fair, though, to expect the Tunisian to challenge Mamelodi Sundowns for the DStv Premiership title in the coming season?

That will seem insurmountable, but given the fact that Nabi came within just one point of winning Morocco’s Botola Pro 1 championship with AS FAR — where he was pipped to the post by Casablanca, a team coached by former Orlando Pirates coach Josef Zinnbauer — we should expect a Chiefs with a better fight than what we’ve seen in the past few seasons.