Johnson, thank the footballing gods you’re not a Chippa coach right now
Cavin Johnson is lucky that he is working for AmaZulu and not under the employ of the trigger-happy Siviwe “Chippa” Mpengesi at Chippa United.
Dr Patrick Sokhela, AmaZulu Chairman with Cavin Johnson, coach of AmaZulu during the Absa Premiership 2018/19 match between Kaizer Chiefs and AmaZulu at the FNB Stadium, Johannesburg on 22 September 2018 ©Muzi Ntombela/BackpagePix
It took AmaZulu over five hours of playing football before they could open their scoring account in the Absa Premiership this season. Their poor showing began with a 3-0 loss at home to Bidvest Wits, followed up by a loss 1-0 loss to Polokwane City before they drew 0-0 to Orlando Pirates and went on to surrender a 1-0 lead and lost 2-1 to Highlands Park in their last outing.
You see, if Johnson was at the helm of the Chilli Boys and delivered these results to Mpengesi, I can bet my low-end monthly salary that Johnson would have already been given his marching orders or at least be afforded one last chance to redeem himself and win his first set of three points in Usuthu’s next assignment, or else…
That next game is against Steve Komphela’s Golden Arrows, who really look like they have something good going on, and it being a fiery KwaZulu-Natal derby, Johnson would probably be as good as gone. But he is fortunate he is not on Mpengesi’s payroll.
Ask Dan “Dance” Malesela and Eric Tinkler, they know how impatient Mpengesi is. To put it bluntly, Mpengesi has been running this his team like a Mickey Mouse club when it comes to the coaching personnel. With three draws and a single defeat, I am sure Clinton Larsen is already uneasy.
Johnson’s excuse for amassing a single point in four games is that AmaZulu need to build and be patient, he went on about how no one knew German side Borussia Dortmund before they played in the Bundesliga as one of the 16 founding teams in 1963, but he knew them in “1958” – the year he was born – while they were plying their trade in Germany’s first division.
Maybe he is right, maybe the club needs to be patient, maybe they need to forget about the almost-nonagenarian old history and embrace their infant status that they adopted when they parachuted themselves back into the top-flight in 2017. Because in the end, that is the reality and the history is for the history books.
I am not saying AmaZulu are softies – Julio Leal, Manqoba Mngqithi and Neil Tovey can attest – but chances are very high that Johnson would be unemployed by now if he was a Chippa coach. The international break coming up, Johnson needs to use this time to get his act together or else he might run the risk of being the first causality this season. And word has it that former Rise and Shine coach Jozef Vukusic is waiting on the wings.
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