Billiat signing was a stroke of genius

Just when Kaizer Chiefs needed a lift, needed someone to raise their spirits after a glum start to the season, the Zimbabwean was there to show his class and help Amakhosi pick up a first league victory of the season.

I have criticised Billiat before for not taking an overseas move when he left Sundowns at the end of last season, after his contract ran out.

I do feel he is talented enough to make it in some of Europe’s leagues and think he would have benefited more from the challenge than staying in the Absa Premiership.

However, Chiefs are real beneficiaries of his decision and in him and Lebogang Manyama, they really do have two marquee signings to fill their fans with joy in this 2018/19 season.

Up until Saturday, of course, the results had not provided much joy, bar one MTN8 quarterfinal victory over Free State Stars.

There were a whole bunch of draws, with Giovanni Solinas’ commitment to attack badly shown up in a 2-2 stalemate with Bloemfontein Celtic.

Solinas, however, is to be commended for playing an attacking formation in a league where coaches often sit behind the ball and play it all too tactically.

In Manyama and Billiat, Solinas certainly has the players to implement this attacking philosophy and the game against City, where the pair played together for the first time, showed plenty of promise.

Dumisani Zuma also looks a fantastic signing for Chiefs from last season, and his counter-attacking fourth goal was a real thing of beauty, bursting forward from well inside his own half.
Beating City 4-1 on their own patch is no mean feat, though, even if City did have Taariq Fielies sent off in the second half, and were always up against it from that point onward. The way Chiefs cut through McCarthy’s men was clinical, and much of that was down to Billiat.

The Zimbabwean’s first header did look to have an element of fortune about it – it certainly wasn’t a completely clean header that flew into the corner of the net.

But if you don’t put yourself in those positions, you certainly won’t score, and Billiat just has that knack of getting into the right place inside the box, as he proved with Chiefs’ third goal, a real poacher’s effort.

Solinas deserves this kind of boost as it is never easy taking the Chiefs job, and the pressure can be relentless. Of course, if they lose at Free State Stars this evening, that pressure will be right back on, such is the nature of the game.

If Chiefs can go on a run, however, and part of that will be sorting out their leaky defence, as well as keeping the attacking momentum going, it will be good for the league. A strong Chiefs and Orlando Pirates always somehow make South African football that bit better to watch.

One man who has soared after leaving Chiefs, however, is Steve Komphela, whose astonishing start to the campaign netted him the Absa Premiership Coach-of-the- Month award yesterday.

Komphela has built an amazing defensive foundation in his first few games at Celtic, and is proving the old adage that you can’t keep a good man down.

He carried himself with incredible dignity in a difficult three years at Chiefs and deserves all the plaudits he is getting now.

It will be interesting to see if Phunya Sele Sele, a side battling to pay its players at the start of this season, somehow manage to launch an unlikely challenge for the title. What a fairy tale that would be.