Chiefs’ Johnson on Ngcobo – he may look fat, but he is not fat

Kaizer Chiefs interim head coach Cavin Johnson has rejected a suggestion that midfielder Nkosingiphile Ngcobo looked overweight, as Amakhosi played out another insipid goalless draw at FNB Stadium on Saturday.

Amakhosi were held by Moroka Swallows, in what was the third straight game in all competitions in 2024 that they have failed to hit the back of the net. Ngcobo only came on for the last five minutes of the match, but Johnson insisted that the 24 year-old is in good shape.

“I don’t think he is overweight, I think he is fine. He might look overweight, but we have people looking at all these things,” said Johnson at the post match press conference.

“We have one of the best fitness centres in the country, we do all the measurements and everything has come out perfect. He may look fat but he is not fat, he is normal. Who are we as outside people to decide whether a person is fat?”

‘Methinks the Chiefs coach doth protest too much,’ may be an appropriate Shakespearean rip-off of these comments, but what is of no doubt is that Amakhosi’s season is going absolutely nowhere.

Chiefs generally seemed to lack energy and desire against Swallows, doing little in the first half, after which their best laid plans were disrupted by a straight red card for defender Edmilson Dove.

Lightning in the area caused a delay to the match of over an hour, and it could have got worse for Chiefs once play resumed, with Swallows wasting several presentable opportunities to take the lead, though credit also has to go to Chiefs’ resilience at the back.

Amakhosi have now kept six clean sheets in their last seven matches, but the problem is that at the other end of the pitch they look totally bereft of ideas.

Striker woes

Slightly bizzarely, Johnson seemed to blame the ‘TikTok’ age.

“It has always been a concern (scoring goals) since I started coaching … it is only nice when you see goals. All my life I said ‘if you score two, I score three, if you score six, I score seven’. It is something we work on continuously. If we work on it, it will come right.

“It is (also) a mentality thing … all you guys are writing, takling, TikTok-ing, tweeting. When that is the generation of athlete, it is all about these things you like to do. Maybe I need to do it (too) and the strikers will get better.”