Kaizer Chiefs must beat Sundowns or Nasreddine Nabi faces fan backlash
Pressure to deliver Nasreddine Nabi will be back in the dugout when Kaizer Chiefs host perennial champions Mamelodi Sundowns on Wednesday evening. Photo: BackpagePix
Image: BackpagePix
Victory is non-negotiable for Kaizer Chiefs in Wednesday night’s Betway Premiership game against perennial champions Mamelodi Sundowns.
Amakhosi have made a brilliant start to the new season and currently sit second in the league after three wins from as many games. All of those games were played with assistant coach Khalil Ben Youssef in the dugout while Nasreddine Nabi was away, attending to a very personal matter back home in Tunisia.
While Nabi has been leading the team in the background, for many fans, it will not have gone unnoticed that all those wins came with Youssef at the helm. And last season, when Nabi was serving a suspension, a struggling Chiefs won both games when Youssef was on the touchline.
Nabi is back in the country and was seen in the hospitality suites at last weekend’s MTN8 semi-final clash between Sundowns and Orlando Pirates. Wednesday’s game against Sundowns will be his first on the touchline this season.
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Should Chiefs lose, Nabi will find it hard to convince Chiefs’ fans that he’s not the problem. Already, the narrative has started to shift against the Tunisian tactician.
Last season, Chiefs failed to finish in the top half, and during the most recent preseason, things weren’t looking so good. It was even reported that relations between the coach and the club’s management have soured.
Fans will be saying: “Without Nabi, we’re winning games, but when he’s leading the team, we’re not doing well. If the board don’t trust him, he must go.”
To ensure that Kaizer Chiefs’ very vocal and opinionated fans remain happy, Chiefs have to walk away from their encounter with Sundowns with all three points. Anything less and the knives will be out.
Arthur Zwane and Molefi Ntseki, who came before Nabi, showed how quickly Chiefs coaches can lose fan support once results start dropping – and how impossible it is to recover from that slide. I expect that if Chiefs are defeated on Wednesday, the supporters’ backlash will be immediate and unforgiving – and history shows they rarely soften once their minds are made up.
For Nabi, then, this showdown is about more than just points on the board – it’s about authority, belief, and survival. Beat Sundowns, and he seizes control of the narrative, proving he can lead Amakhosi into a new era. Lose, and the storm clouds that have been gathering since last season will quickly become a full-blown crisis.
IOL Sport
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