Kaizer Chiefs head coach Nasreddine Nabi - Photo Courtesy Chiefs Media.
Kaizer Chiefs head coach Nasreddine Nabi believes his side deserved to win by a huge margin against Chippa United in their Betway Premiership clash but they played with fear in the second half of the game at Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban on Sunday.
Mduduzi Shabalala scored a goal-of-the-season contender to earn Amakhosi a hard-fought 1-0 win against the Chilli Boys, while an excellent save from custodian Bruce Bvuma late on secured the Chiefs their first clean sheet of the league this campaign.
Shabalala made the decisive contribution of a hard-fought encounter on the stroke of half-time when he glided past three defenders and then smashed the ball home in a mesmerising run that had the massive crowd that had come out in support of the Glamour Boys gasping with wonder and delight.
His effort proved to be the only goal of the game, despite Amakhosi’s overall dominance.
“We needed to start on the front foot from the beginning, in the first half we were good, not very good but good, the only issue was to score the first goal and in the second half we played with fear,” he told SuperSport TV after the game as quoted by idiskitimes.
“When you play with fear, you play with the handbrake, you don’t go forward or 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. But after these three points, we are confident we can build from this.”
On the save by Bruce which helped Chiefs to first clean sheet, Nabi said: “Congratulations to everyone, Bruce as well, he made good saves, but we’re not there in our quality of game that we want to put forward but we believe going forward we can build and have more consistent quality games.”
Amakhosi will shift focus to their next league fixture against Cape Town City at the DHL Stadium next Sunday.
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