It only takes MTN8 games for the fans to want you gone!

Moroka Swallows have now gone eight competitive matches without a victory.  This poor run of results has put coach Zeca Marques, affectionately known as Majazana, under a lot of pressure.


I attended the last home game against Supersport United and witnessed first-hand how angry and frustrated the Swallows supporters, Maswaiswai were. Many of the Birds faithful want Marques gone.


However, I feel a bit of perspective is needed in this current situation the Birds are experiencing.


One question immediately springs to mind: at the beginning of the season what exactly were the expectations of fans and board alike?


The board did not explicitly state their objectives or Majazana's mandate. Was his mandate to win the league? Was it to repeat last season's performance? Or was the mandate to merely ensure a top 8 finish?


Some supporters expected Swallows to improve on last season (and go on win the league title).  Some supporters, like myself, knew very well that last season was a once-off: the boys played out of their socks and that performance would not be repeated without substantial investment.


Liverpool had a similar experience a few years ago.  In 2009, Liverpool finished as runners-up behind Manchester United, however, since the 2008/09 season, "Pool's league performance has declined drastically to the point where finishing eighth is now described by their current manager as a "fantastic" achievement.


Swallows, just like the legendary club from Merseyside, may be a big club in terms of history but, currently, they are not amongst the biggest in terms of money. Therefore it is no surprise to find three out of the four richest clubs occupying the top 3 places in the Premier Soccer League right now.


On paper, that's to be expected.


Personally, my expectations for Swallows this season were for the team to achieve a top-6 finish and I did not expect to have trophy in the cabinet at all, especially with Mamelodi Sundowns doing what they do best with the chequebook, and Kaizer Chiefs awakening to flex their financial muscle in the transfer market again.


Marques, delivered a trophy within a few months, something which Gordon Igesund was not able to achieve. By turning this Swallows team into MTN8 champions, Marques has already surpassed my expectations.


As an Arsenal supporter - you can trust me on this one - winning a trophy is a much better feeling than securing a respectable league finish.


As bad as we are playing right now, Marques' results, viewed objectively, show that he has been more successful than "GI" (one trophy versus Igesund's tally of zero trophies). I even wrote a blog titled "All hail Majazana" pointing out the reasons as to why Majazana deserves more credit for this achievement.


And yes, Gordon Igesund did indeed build this team up and transform them from being relegation candidates to title contenders within the space of a year. "GI" built the team up, improved their confidence and pretty much turned water into wine (if you listen to some his fans). But, the fact remains that he failed to win a trophy with the team during his stint as head coach. Zeca Marques made a few tweaks here and there (adding free agent Katlego “Mahoota” Mashego to the squad, for example) and took the team to a higher level.


Why is it that when a new coach comes after the previous coach and fails, we blame the new coach, but when the said new coach comes after a relatively successful stint by the previous coach, the credit goes to the previous coach for any success that the team gains?


Here’s one example: Jose Mourinho’s former clubs’ performances usually decline drastically following his departure, and the blame is always laid squarely on the shoulders of the new man.


Yet in Barcelona, new coach Tito Vilanova is not getting the credit he deserves for ensuring Barcelona enjoy one of their best ever La Liga starts to the season. This is due to the fact that some pundits see him as someone who is merely carrying on the good work of former coach, Pep Guardiola.


Marques will probably be fired before the end of year judging on recent statements by Leon Prins.


Yet another local coach will be fired (or allowed to resign depending on how you look at it) due to players performing below par for – using Leon Prins’ words - “no apparent good reason”.


But that is the way things work in the PSL, when it doubt, and when you see “no apparent god reason” for the decline in performance, what do you do? You fire the coach, of course!


Thomas Monyepao

Do follow me on twitter @Tom_18Yards. You can find more of my articles on the onetwo.co.za site.

Match analysis: Kaizer Chiefs vs Bloemfontein Celtic 21 March 2012

This was my first ever blog, on a different platform about 6 months ago.  Very long but comprehensive breakdown of the game between Kaizer Chiefs and Bloemfontein Celtic.  Looking back from where I started, my writing has improved since then.

After listening to bits and pieces of Vladimir Verzmezovic’s post-match interview where he stated that his players were not “killers”, I decided to watch the rebroadcast of the match between Kaizer Chiefs and Bloemfontein Celtic which was played on the 21^st of March 2012 and start blogging.

With such a lack independent bloggers out there, I decided that I would lead and begin the trend in SA -in England you can find a blogger on almost every street corner. 
 

In my opinion, I do not feel the level of SA punditry is not very high, I actually feel it is quite bad and of poor quality. I remember a certain pundit on show discussing on Thomas Mlambo’s show on the Supersport speaking on why the referee in the recent Soweto Derby decided not to allow play to go on for the full 6 minutes injury time he had indicated. This particular “expert” justified this by asking the following question, “Did he(the ref) not indicate this during the 89^th minute?”

That was what twitter world call a “SMH” moment. The other pundit in the studio justified the ref’s decision by claiming Chiefs had 90 minutes to find a goal so "nobody should be looking at the ref". The logic and reasoning left me speechless.

Through this blog, let’s read, learn, disagree, debate and discuss. These discussions are what make football such a popular sport globally and as the Supersport tag line goes: “The more you know, the better it gets”.
 

Now that I have got the formalities out of the way, let’s dive into the soccer stuff.

This week I decided to analyse the the PSL match between Kaizer Chiefs and Bloemfontein from the Peter Mokaba stadium.

General overview:
Chiefs adopted a short-passing, compact attacking strategy. Their aim was to patiently build up play, with a lot of players getting a touch of the ball on the way to a shot or interception from the opponents. They kept the ball on the ground and penetrated mainly through the left and centre of the field.
Celtic began the match with a counter-attacking strategy which failed miserably in the first half and basically made the job ten times easier for Chiefs. Clinton Larson realized his mistake at half time and the team started attacking in numbers following the half-time break thereby making it much easier to keep possession as their striker Madubanya was not as isolated as he was in the first half. In the first half, Madubanya had to receive long balls with his back against goal and with little support. Celtic’s strategy of using fast wingers was a good strategy especially as VV decided to use rusty wingbacks, Tau and Jambo, in this game, the former not contributing at all in an attacking sense and also not putting in a great performance defensively. 

 Celtic also tried to score a goal through corners and freekicks using the towering Mathoho as the player to provided knockdowns and flicks in the air. The strategy almost worked but Khune made an important reflex save in the first half from a shot which could have changed the game.

Both teams enjoyed a pass completion rate of over 80% but Chiefs were more efficient and used the ball wisely. Many of you may say that Chiefs wasted a lot of scoring chances – this is no excuse – but that only occurred when they were 2-0 up and the game was now in their control.

Both teams used – what looked to me – a 4-2-3-1 formation. For Chiefs this involved Tshabalala having the role of central attacking midfield, a role, I feel, he is not well suited to and a role where his excellent crossing ability is wasted. “Shabba” had Lebese and Masango on the either side of him wth Majoro riding solo in the centre forward position. Baloyi and the impressive Katsande patrolled the centre of the field and broke up Celtic’s build-up play. The sequence of events leading up to Baloyi’s goal involved him making an interception in the centre of the park and finishing of his own solo run. That was excellent play from the man but his shooting for the rest of the night was awful. He definitely is not a “killer”. He may not be a striker and some may say his role is in the deep midfield area but one would expect better shooting accuracy from a professional football player at a big club. As previously mentioned, Jimmy Tau did not provide an attacking threat at all which is a big contributing factor that lead to 68% of Chefs’ crosses from the flank in the game coming from the left side of the pitch. Jambo linked up well with Lebese, Majoro, Baloyi and to a lesser extent Tshabalala on the left flank, this troubled Celtic greatly. It must be noted, however, that 61% of Celtic’s crosses came from Jambo’s flank, this may be due to his attacking forays but I feel this was simply due to right footed players playing on the right hand side.

Many people underestimate the value of a having a right footed winger/wingback. Phenyo Mongala was having his way with Tau on the left but not really providing the crosses into the box. Mogala rather preferred dribbling or passing inside. This, as I stated, is largely because of him being a right-footed player playing on the left and preferring to cut inside.

1st half:

The short-passing carpet football tactic employed by Chiefs worked marvelously when in possession, especially in the first half. After 20 minutes, the possession stats read: 62% ball possession for the Glamour Boys, and a measly 38% worth of possession for the team from the Free State province. Interceptions from Celtic came in their defensive third 59% of the time. What does that tell us? Penetration. Chiefs use that possession intelligently and penetrate straight through the Celtic midfield and pressurize the Celtic defence in their own half. In the first half, Chiefs penetrated the Celtic defence on numerous occasions and as a result they lost possession (via interceptions) 60% of the time in the attacking third. This shows that the managed to pass the ball patiently and keep possession, mainly in the centre, and lost the ball usually when attempting the killer pass, a dribble, or a careless mistake in the attacking third. But, this is exactly where you want your team losing possession as a coach, in the opponent’s defensive third, thus putting the opponents under pressure and usually resulting in panic clearances or hopeful long balls leading to possession being gifted straight back to your team far away from your own goal. Although Celtic lost the ball the same amount in the attacking third as they did in the middle third of the pitch (48%) they usually lost the ball easily because they were playing long balls to their big striker Madubanya who lacked support and was crowded out by Chiefs’ defensive players. This is where I feel Clinton Larson went wrong. By not allowing numbers forward, the Celtic players played a brand of football that they (and most other South African teams) are not comfortable with, they then failed to penetrate the Chiefs defence or keep possession for a good amount of time to relieve the pressure off their defence.

With Chiefs dominating play, it has to be said that they failed to really make it count and only managed to take the lead through Baloyi’s long range shot which came about largely due to bad defence and poor keeping from Celtic. Players taking too many touches on the ball before attempting to take a shot contributes to possession not amounting to many goals in the South African game.

Let’s s how the goal came about:

• · Baloyi in his defensive midfield position intercepted the ball in the middle of the park (an area where up until that point Chiefs had intercepted the ball 55% of the time)

• · The 1^st player tracking Baloyi on his run slows down and basically lets Baloyi open up a gap. The 2^nd player allows Baloyi to glide past without any use of sidesteps or silky tricks.

• · At this point there are 2 Celtic defenders that are not marking a player (including captain Nthethe who really should be now closing down Baloyi) and still none of them decided to charge down Baloyi and close down the space he had available.

• · With all this space available, Baloyi decided to take a shot which went past the keeper who was in no man’s land.

It was a decent shot that would not have cause too much trouble to most keepers under normal circumstances. Had the Celtic keeper, Thabani Stemmer, not been so badly positioned (he was a few yards off his line) the score could have possibly remained a level for much longer in the game and frustrate Chiefs with all their possession. The goal was more of a chip than a “rocket” past the keeper. Poor, poor keeping, but credit to Baloyi for taking responsibility and being brave. I hope he bought the Celtic defence a few beers after the game because that goal was a gift.

Speaking about gifts, Jambo almost gave Celtic a gift at the other end. He failed to simply head the ball clear and instead headed it right into the path of a Celtic player. Luckily for Chiefs, the shot went straight to Khune’s feet. Chiefs’ left backs are not doing the team any favours with their errors. Keegan Ritchie cost Chiefs dearly in the Soweto derby played in the previous week by trying to dribble in the 18-yard area instead of clearing the ball. This gifted the lethal Benni McCarthy with a chance to fire Pirates into the lead. On that topic, is VV now going to not play Jambo in the next game due to one - admittedly silly - mistake? Is this really a good approach to coaching from VV, putting on more pressure on players at this - an already pressurized - stage of the season? What would you do if you were the coach?

The first half was Phenyo Mongala’s time to shine for Celtic. 64% of Celtic’s crosses came from his flank. It is a pity he faded in the second half as Celtic began to spread the play. One must also note that the Madubanya was not making the proper diagonal runs to create space for himself and create a better angel for the two Celtic wingers to cross to (I speak about Majoro’s runs a little later in the blog). This pretty much works against Larson’s strategy of using counter-attacking and width to penetrate the Chiefs defence.

A key moment in the first half for Celtic was when the Chiefs defender, Zvasiya, easily let Mabubanya past him as he let the ball bounce over himself. The striker who was then gifted with a 1 versus 1 opportunity to score then failed to provide a shot on target. This was a potential turning point on the match. If you fail to shoot straight (on target), you will fail to score. This is a principle that all youth coaches should teach their young strikers. If you don’t believe that, watch “Chicharito” and Darren Bent who both play in the Barclays English Premier league respectively. They do the basics excellently, and a good product follows.

2^nd half:

Following his initial tactical blunder in his approach t the game in the first half, Larson clearly had told the players to push up and support in attack a lot more and play the ball around on the ground. Although Celtic were starting lose the ball higher up in the field and the stats may make them look like they were dominating the early part of the 2^nd half, that wasn’t necessarily true. Chiefs allowed Celtic to play around with the ball but managed to prevent them from penetrating all the way through to goal and when Chiefs had the ball they were efficient and the end result of their moves was either a goal-scoring opportunity, corner, throw or an attempted killer pass which was grabbed by the keeper. Celtic, however, were starting to get back into the game, by the 60 minute mark, possession for Celtic was now 47% (up from the pathetic 34% in the 40^th minute). Clinton Larson must really be kicking himself for his initial tactical blunders. It was too little to late because by the 60^th minute, Chiefs were 2 goals up.

Let’s analyze Chiefs’ beautiful 2^nd goal:

Let me state that this goal is great for teaching youngsters movement off the ball

• · Jambo intercepted the ball in the left hand side in the middle of the park.He then proceeded to switch play to George Lebese who was on the right hand side of the field, unusually,

• · Masango made a run into space as Lebese received the ball,

• · Lebese proceeded to play it to Masanago,

• · Masango took a touch to control and crossed with his 2^nd touch (uick and decisive), and

• · Majoro took 2 or 3 yards away from the defender just before Masango crossed the ball which then lead to him having an easy tap in for the goal.

The first lesson for youngsters is: when a player from the attacking team has possession of the ball on either flank and near to the goal line, the players from the defending team will now find it much harder to focus on both the ball and the player that he/she was marking. That is one reason why a strategy aimed at penetrating through wide areas works excellently for certain teams. Defenders are running towards their own goal, head facing ball, while the attacking player is not in his vision. Some teams however cross from deep which usually allows the defender to see both the striker and the ball.

A deeper analysis of the ball (for all the coaches reading this):

• · At the moment when Lebese received the ball, the situation was essentially a 4v5 situation (4 attackers versus 5 defenders). One Celtic player, Mahoa, was marking Tshabalala, one Celtic player was running towards Lebese, one Celtic player was lazily tracking Masango, and one defender was taking care of Lehlogonolo “Balz” Majoro while Celtic captain Thabo Nthethe was in open space.

• · The pass to Masango from Lebese then forced Mahoa to leave him Tshabalala and try close Masango down(which he failed) as the player that was lazily tracking Masango was now nowhere close enough to challenge Masango. This meant that Masango could either continue penetrating through the Celtic defence or pass it out wide to a FREE “Shabba” (remember this was a 4v5 situation yet at that point Chiefs had a free player with nobody marking him).

• · Captain Nthethe was still in no man’s land thus Masango continued his run through the Celtic defence.

• · A this point, there were two Chiefs players in the box (including Masango) and FOUR Celtic defenders (2v4 situation) yet the move still ended up in a goal for Chiefs. One defender is marking Majoro and the other 3 were pretty much in no man’s land and not close enough to close Masango down (Nthethe must really have issues with charging at and closing Chiefs players down).

• · “Balz” Majoro’s clever run went from running towards the ball then suddenly changing direction and running outwards and further from the ball just before Masango crossed the ball, thereby creating space and boom beautiful goal from Chiefs.

• · Bad defending from Celtic, great movement off the ball from Lehlogonolo “I do hav balz” Majoro aka “Balz”.

After the 2nd goal, both teams made 2 substitutions and the game went through a disjointed phase where possession was changing hands after every few seconds. It was not pretty to watch for five minutes or so from either team. This phase culminated in one of the substitutes, Dladla, giving away a sloppy pass in the defensive third which gave Celtic’s Ghanaian player, Osei, a good opportunity to score but Khune made a good save. I think Osei might grow into a good PSL player. In Mike Mangena’s words, “I am putting my head on the block”.

Because Celtic was pushing more men forward, Celtic leave a big hole in the middle between attack and defence for Chiefs to exploit and, thus, the rest of the half ends up having Chiefs players (Parker, Dlaldla, and Baloyi to name a few) missing easy one-on-one opportunities that left coach VV feeling extremely frustrated at the lack of killer instinct. Chiefs do not have a “killer”... they have a Parker (cheesy, I know). Baloyi must really thank his lucky stars fro that goal because that was his only shot on target the whole game with the rest of his game being pretty pathetic in the shooting department. However, it must be noted that both teams struggled with playing direct football. This is mainly because the players fail to choose the right time to execute a pass or they choose the wrong player to pass to.
Possession in the 2^nd half alone was 55% for Celtic and 45% for the Naturena Boys. Celtic improved their play but in their quest to get a goal they were left open to numerous counter-attacks from Chiefs.   Judging by the fact that Chiefs created so many opportunities (14 shots compared to 6 shots for Celtic) in the half, Chiefs were very efficient with their possession, which stood at 45% for the half,.

Celtic played a bit like Bafana Bafana – plenty of possession but no penetration.

One must congratulate referee, Daniel Bennett for booking Tshabalala for simulation in the first half. Diving is something I hate seeing in the game and I take my hat off to every referee who books the players who do this sort of thing as these refs discourage such negative actions from players by sending a clear message of zero tolerance. I will resist slating referee Bennett for his inexcusable decision not to send of Celtic keeper for his handling the ball outside the box. Stemmer prevented a clear gal-scoring opportunity. I shall say no more.

One must also mention Kaizer Chiefs’ coach, Vladimir Verzmezovic, and his coaching stuff for developing Itumeleng Khune’s distribution to the point whereby he is also a very useful attacking tool. Within 60 minutes, Khune had already played at least FOUR direct long balls from his hands straight to the edge of the opposition’s 18-yard area (mostly to Majoro).

One question though, with all due respect , what is player of Zothwane’s ability doing warming the bench at a team like Celtic? Is it off-the-field indiscipline or other issues?

I hope you enjoyed reading this blog, and gained a bit of insight as a player, coach, or fan of the game. 

I would also like to say congratulations to Darren Keet on becoming the youngest SA born keeper to play in a cup final in Europe. You are making Bidvest Wits and the country proud.

Thomas Monyepao

Starting lineups

Chiefs: Khune (c), Jambo,Tau, Zvasiya, Isaacs, Baloyi, Katsande, Lebeses, Masango, Tshabalala, “Balz” Majoro

Celtic: Stemmer, Moleko, Mathoho, Nthete (C), Mahoa, Mshengu, Mkhwanazi, Kerspuy, Mongala, Mofokeng, Madubanya.