Kaizer Chiefs head coach Arthur Zwane has insisted that injuries were the biggest problem for his side in his debut campaign on the sidelines.
Zwane was appointed in May 2022, becoming the permanent replacement of Stuart Baxter, as Chiefs wanted to head into a new era under ‘10111’, who became the first head coach to have come through the club’s development ranks.
However, the 49-year-old experienced a tough first season at Naturena, which ended with 12 defeats in the DStv Premiership – a new record in the Premier Soccer League era, while semi-finals in the MTN8 and Nedbank Cup proved some progress but his side couldn’t book their spot in the finals and ended another campaign without silverware.
Zwane has now reviewed the 2022/23 campaign, admitting the ended on low after continuous injuries turned out to be the biggest Achilles heel for his side.
“Being unveiled as head coach was a dream come true,” he said on Kaizer Chiefs TV.
“We wanted to make sure that the project succeeds. [But] we ended the season on a very, very low note after we started very, very well. It’s just that things were not consistent. The fluctuation of results also unsettled us.
“To sum it up all, I would say injuries hindered our progress this past season and unfortunately it’s something we couldn’t control, we couldn’t control injuries.
“Football is a contact sport and anything can happen. I’ve never seen so many injuries in one season. We lost two players at some point, who collided with each other – it just didn’t make sense.”
Zwane admits that he has much higher targets as coach, but injuries have prevented his side from reaching many of them.
“As I said, injuries were the enemy of progress,” he added.
“It was for sure a tough one, but everything happens for a reason. We are all part of the game.
“I’m a coach, who is ambitious, who wants to win games. The first thing as a coach, you want to win the league, you want to win silverware.
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“You want to see players improving, you want to see players going to the national team, you want to see players going overseas and you want the team campaigning in the CAF Champions League in the future.”
Meanwhile, Zwane’s future remains uncertain, with the club’s leadership understood to have sounded out other coaches, before engaging with talks with former Simba SC coach Nasreddine Nabi.