Zwane wants Chiefs to win with ‘flair’ and not just for the sake of it

Kaizer Chiefs head coach Arthur Zwane says that Amakhosi need to play with “flair” and “identity,” after taking over as caretaker head coach until the end of the season.

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The clear implication here is that Chiefs felt they lacked both under Stuart Baxter, who was sacked last week after a poor second spell in charge at Naturena.

There was little sign of any immediate improvement on Saturday, as Chiefs lost 1-0 at Stellenbosch FC, despite a partisan crowd coming to cheer on Amakhosi at the Danie Craven Stadium.

Zwane indicated that instilling new ideas in the team would take some time.

“I think we need a killer instinct but we started training the team on Thursday. We are trying not to be so predictable in attack, when we reach the final third we should have that element of surprise,” said Zwane at the post match press conference.

“We need to play with flair, with Chiefs there must be an identity and we will try and push the style of play, how we want to win … we must make sure it works for all our teams, even in our development structures there is a way of playing, and we want to take that to the first team. It shouldn’t just be about winning for the sake of winning.”

Zwane also admitted that he felt Chiefs played with too much fear against Stellenbosch, as if they were afraid of giving the ball away, and thus resorted to too many long balls forward.

“Mentally they (the players) need to be strong, and as technical staff we should play a role in helping them to be calm and not to be worried about losing the ball,” added Zwane.

“That is the fear they have, once a player doesn’t have confidence they always kick the ball into the air. If you look at the players in South Africa, they have that creative mindset. If you look at our team, only (Leonardo) Castro and Samir (Nurkovic) give us that different dimension (in the air).

“We have more players with game intelligence than those that want to head the ball. We can’t just rely on dead ball situations and set plays. Goals must come in open play and that is why we want to dominate, and make sure we win games in open play. If we score from set plays, that is a bonus.”