Solinas almost destroyed Billiat, says Chiefs star defender
Kaizer Chiefs defender Daniel Cardoso has opened up about how former coach Giovanni Solinas’ chopping and changing of the starting eleven confused the players and left them demotivated.
Khama Billiat and Giovanni Solinas of Kaizer Chiefs during the Absa Premiership 2018/19 Coach and Player of the Month for September Announcement at the PSL Offices. (Aubrey Kgakatsi/BackpagePix)
Cardoso said players would be benched after giving a good performance and that left them unsure of what they did wrong and Solinas would tell them that he was just giving them a rest.
The 30-year-old said Solinas almost destroyed Khama Billiat as he made him the “Messi” of South African football, thus putting him under immense pressure.
“If you remember in every game there were six or seven changes in the line-up, and you can’t get consistency like that. As a player you grow in confidence when you play… (under Solinas) you’d play two games and do well but then in the next three you are out and wondering what you did wrong. And then he would tell you he is resting you and protecting you.
“I don’t think he had much of a plan. We’d be on the training grounds for three hours running against mannequins – there was no structure,” said Cardoso on Thursday afternoon.
“The (club’s) badge should be a motivation but when a coach changes players like that it gets hard. He used Khama and Castro in every game but what was that saying to the other players?
“Apparently Khama was the ‘Messi’ of South Africa for Solinas. And I think that got to him (Khama) as well and he thought he was the greatest… look Khama is a great striker, don’t get me wrong but you can see we went through a deep in form and he is now trying to recover. I think it was a case of giving too much confidence to one player and nothing to others.
“You can’t put it all on one player’s shoulders, it’s a team. We are not playing tennis or chess, it’s a team sport unfortunately. For us we couldn’t question him, he was the head coach. But bowing down to a player in front of the crowds and other players, it gives him more pressure because he knows he has to perform in every game and it’s not every day that you can perform something, it can’t happen,” said Cardoso.
For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.
