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Relief for Nabi at Chiefs’ Cup success

football10 May 2025 19:35| © Mzansi Football
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Kaizer Chiefs coach Nasreddine Nabi expressed his relief at Nedbank Cup final success on Saturday, feeling their 2-1 victory over arch-rivals Orlando Pirates at Durban’s Moses Mabhida Stadium would allow him to continue at the club.

Skipper Yusuf Maart drilled home a dramatic 82nd minute winner to end Chiefs’ 10-year trophy drought and arguably kept Nabi in his job after a poor league campaign with the club outside the top eight places with two matches still to play.

“I'm happy for this trophy today because maybe it has helped me to continue my process. And maybe it has helped to give more confidence to the fans,” he told the post-final press conference.

“Maybe they’ll understand how important the process of building their team is. Sometimes things don’t go your way right away, and you need maybe time to suffer and to rebuild, to be better.”

Nabi said it had been a hard-fought victory, with Chiefs leading through Gaston Sirino’s early penalty but only for seven minutes before Evidence Makgopa equalised.

“Obviously, we have to agree that it wasn't a very nice final, not very entertaining but, you know, in these kind of finals, you don't play it, you win it.

“After we conceded the equaliser to Pirates we had a bit of worry that mentally we'd collapse, as it was in the previous games, but we got through our tough moments until halftime where we tried to reorganise ourselves, to be more compact.

“We believe that the changes that we made with Ox (Sibongiseni Mthethwa), (Mdu) Shabalala and Ashley (du Preez) gave us more energy, more balance to get back into the game and to control more the game and to score the second goal,” Nabi added.

WINNING CUP ONE STEP IN THE 'PROCESS'

Nabi said winning the cup was a step in his often-mentioned “process”.

“It's very important. A trophy for the club, it's management and for the entire staff of the team. Plus the fans.

“But the first objective for myself is the process of re-building and putting Kaizer Chiefs back in its natural position.

“This is my first objective. After that, I go home,’ He added.

Nabi had surprised in his selection by fielding Brandon Petersen in goal despite his not having played since December, dropping Bruce Bvuma after 23 successive games in the Chiefs’ goal.

“There was a kind of an extreme pressure on Bruce Bvuma these last few weeks, and we believe that it was an inhuman amount of pressure on him and we wanted to protect him, but as well, we noticed that the three goalkeepers have the almost the same level, but Brandon Petersen has been training tremendously.

“Don't for one minute think that this was an easy decision, because it could have gone any either way.

“But our goalkeeper coach was confident that he had put in the work with Brandon Peterson and we believe that through the 90 minutes, he proved that it was an excellent bet,” the Chiefs coach added.

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