Nabi says Chiefs ‘played with handbrake’ against Chippa

Kaizer Chiefs coach Nasreddine Nabi is confident that Amakhosi can build from this past weekend’s victory over Chippa United.

This comes after Amakhosi edged the Chilli Boys 1-0 at the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban in their final Betway Premiership game of 2024.

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“We needed to start on the front foot from the beginning. I would say that the first half was good, not very good but was good, the only issue was that after we scored the first goal, in the second half we played with fear, and when you play with fear, you play with the handbrake,” said Nabi.

“When you play with fear you don’t go forward or go back back, but it’s understandable, it’s psychological because the last results were not very positive and the players wanted so much to get three points that sometimes they felt like not going forward, just to sit back and defend,” added the Tunisian coach.

Nabi also praised his charges for the way they played against Chippa and reserved special praise for goalkeeper Bruce Bvuma who pulled off some great saves to make sure that Chiefs take all the three points.

“But after these three points, we are confident we can build from this. Congratulations to everyone, the goalkeeper as well, with good saves he made, but we are not there in our quality of game that we want to put forward but we believe going forward we will build from this and have more consistent quality games,” commented Nabi.

Chiefs, who are seventh on the log standings and trailing log leaders Mamelodi Sundowns by 15 points, will resume their league campaign with a clash against 12th-placed Cape Town City away in the Mother City on Sunday. They will then host Stellenbosch FC at home next week on Wednesday.

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Nabi will be looking to get maximum points from both games in order to close the gap on Sundowns who will not be in action in the domestic league this weekend. The Brazilians will travel to Morocco this week where they will play Raja Casablanca in a CAF Champions League clash on Saturday night (kick-off for this clash is 9pm).