Friday | May 28, 2021
Kaizer Chiefs Football Club dismissed their head coach Gavin Hunt prematurely.
Hunt had signed a 3-year contract in September 2020 with the Soweto giant. Today Chiefs ended it in his first season after a disastrous domestic season.
The statement from the club read:
“Kaizer Chiefs have terminated coach Gavin Hunt’s contract with immediate effect. In the interim, Assistant Coaches Arthur Zwane and Dillon Sheppard will take charge of the senior team.”
The highly acclaimed Gavin Hunt succeeded Ernst Middendorp who missed out on the league honours on the last day of the Premiership season. Having come second in the league, Amakhosi had higher hopes with their new incumbent. Chiefs acquired Hunt’s services from the now defunct Bidvest University.
Hits and misses
One of the outstanding performances for Gavin Hunt is qualifying Kaizer Chiefs to the semi-finals of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) Champions League. Chiefs will travel to Morocco on June 18 for their first leg and will be home on June 26 for the second leg. At this point in history, Champions League is the highest point of African football at the moment.
Domestically, Hunt may like to relish beating the defending champions then and now the ultimate winners of the league Mamelodi Sundowns. To this end, Sundowns have lost a Premiership League match bar a 2-1 hiccup to Chiefs.
Even that seems not enough to compensate for a horrendous league season. This milestone did not deter Chiefs management to show him the door even before a season into his contract.
More worryingly, Chiefs staged a match recently to submit a hodgepodge of demands concerning the deterioration of the club in the past seasons. It is still unclear whether that was a premonition for the axe on Hunt’s neck.
Then there was that FIFA ban on Chiefs to sign new players from the earlier misdemeanors. It seemed Hunt might have gulped the poisoned chalice by taking up the hotseat at Chiefs notwithstanding this prohibition that denied him acquiring top players. However, that ban has elapsed now and Chiefs have a chance once again to hit the path to get the best players that fans have been protesting about among others pleas.
It is here, The Citizen reported this month, that there was no meeting of minds between the coach and management in terms of the players on his acquisition preference list. Was this a trigger? No apparent reasons on the Naturena – the home base of Kaizer Chiefs – horizon yet.
So, here we are again. The head coach gets kicked out of one of the most embellished clubs innSouth Africa with very little to show for his 8 months stay. He leaves Amakhosi languishing on the unfamiliar 12th position on the log with 30 points out of 28 games. Of these, Hunt won a mere 6 and lost 10 and drew 12 games.
On Wednesday June 2, Chiefs host 3rd-placed Golden Arrows at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg. They will wrap up their tumultuous 2020/2021 Dstv Premiership League campaign with a long trip to Mbombela Stadium in Nelspruit to meet TS Galaxy on Saturday June 5.