Kaizer Motaung has explained why the majority of local coaches struggle at PSL clubs, including Kaizer Chiefs.
Motaung’s answer to a question posed by a fan as part of the club’s 50th-anniversary celebrations was that coaches should equip themselves with knowledge more than anything to be able to handle the pressure of coaching in the PSL.
“It’s not only at Kaizer Chiefs [where local coaches struggle] but all the teams in the league. It’s not really difficult but it’s about knowledge,” Motaung told the Amakhosi website.
“Some of our local coaches need to work harder in terms of acquiring knowledge.”
The 75-year-old reserved special mention for both Pitso Mosimane and Gavin Hunt, who work for Mamelodi Sundowns and Bidvest Wits respectively.
He said more coaches can learn a thing or two from the pair who are veteran coaches and continue to blossom wherever they go.
“We’ve seen the work coaches such as Pitso Mosimane and Gavin Hunt have done to improve themselves,” added Motaung.
“We need more of that sort of commitment from all our local coaches.”
Mosimane and Hunt are the two most successful coaches still involved in professional football in South African, having each won four league titles. The only other two coaches with four PSL titles are Gordon Igesund and the late Ted Dumitru.
Mosimane, Hunt and Igesund are the only South African-born coaches to have lifted the coveted trophy since the inception of the PSL in 1996.
And for Chiefs, it took foreign coaches in Dumitru and Stuart Baxter for them to win the four league titles they have to their name in the last 24 years.
In 2015, Motaung appointed Steve Komphela as the club’s head coach – his first local coach since Trott Moloto in 1994.
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Things didn’t go according to plan as Komphela, now with Golden Arrows, couldn’t deliver trophies at Naturena until his forced resignation in April 2018.
Motaung then replaced Komphela with Italian mentor Giovanni Solinas who was fired a few months down the line and his place was taken by current coach Ernst Middendorp.
Middendorp appears to have awoken the sleeping giant as Chiefs currently top the PSL standings and have done so since August 2019.
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