Chiefs coach Zwane defends Ngezana after costly mistakes
"It's unlike him and he is one of our best defenders in one one one situations but he was not at his best," says Zwane.
Siyabonga Ngezana of Kaizer Chiefs committed two costly mistakes against Sundowns on Saturday.(Photo by Lefty Shivambu/Gallo Images)
Siyabonga Ngezana was the talk of the town in Pretoria among frustrated Kaizer Chiefs fans on Saturday afternoon after the Glamour Boys suffered a 4-0 defeat at the hands of rivals Mamelodi Sundowns.
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The Chiefs centre back did not have the best games as he committed two grave errors that saw Masandawana scoring their opening two goals at Loftus Versfeld.
His coach Arthur Zwane, however, has come out in his defence, saying Ngezana is one of the best defenders he has in his team and is seemingly pleading with the Amakhosi fans to put this one bad performance past them.
“If you look at how it happened, it happened early in the game and ‘Siya” (Siyabonga Ngezana) couldn’t recover,” said Zwane.
“It’s unlike him and he is one of our best defenders in one one one situations but he was not at his best. He committed an error that killed his confidence. He was not himself and maybe it was because of his niggling knee injury.
“He came to me after the Maritzburg United game and said he is not 100% okay but vowed that he would give his best. I said ‘okay, try, but if you can’t, we’ll take you out’. We did not want to break that combination of him and Zitha Kwinika,” he added.
Referee Victor Gomes bizarrely gave Kwinika a yellow card for Ngezana’s transgressions, and in this mistake, Zwane drew reference to further justify Ngezana’s case.
“These things happen in football, I am not going to kill him because of that, I will try to help him lift his spirit up at training. Even the referee made a mistake when he gave Zitha a yellow card instead of Ngezana. We are all human beings and we are bound to make mistakes because it is part of the game,” said the Amakhosi mentor.
