Kaze applauds Chiefs’ improvement this season

In the wake of their 15th league win of the season, when they beat AmaZulu 1-0 at Moses Mabhida Stadium on Saturday, Kaizer Chiefs co-coach Cedric Kaze has lauded the Amakhosi’s improvement.

Chiefs went into the Durban game having already secured third place on the log and a guaranteed slot in next season’s CAF Confederation Cup. They also qualified for the MTN8 knockout tournament for the first time in three years.

“There was not any dominant team this season. I believe we were very close until probably late January,” said Kaze.

“This group of players has grown so much throughout the season ... they played in the Confed Cup, where we travelled a lot. Now you can see the togetherness in the team.”

But despite his team’s solid form, Kaze suggested they should have done even better in challenging for the championship.

“There are lessons we learnt about what we could have done differently to maybe stay in touch with the log leaders. But if you compare the points difference between this season and the last one, we can all see a huge improvement,” the Chiefs coach added.

Chiefs played the last 20 minutes against AmaZulu with 10 men after goal-scorer Glody Lilepo was sent off for removing his shirt after scoring, having already been booked.

“It was unfortunate to play the last 20 minutes with a man down, but we weren’t really in danger. We controlled the game and we were defending well ... we made a little tweak in our system by introducing Miguel to make a back-three to control the space behind our defensive line,” Kaze said.

“It was an unfortunate situation with Lilepo. He’s a player with a lot of experience and he should know better, especially as he had already been booked in the first half. But that’s football, and I also understand his emotions when he scored because a human being without emotion is not a human being.”

Chiefs host Chippa United at Moses Mabhida Stadium in their last game of the season on Saturday.

Sowetan