Kaizer Chiefs: Errors haunt Middendorp against his former employer

Kaizer Chiefs have been in sublime form this season so far, but errors against Maritzburg United have plagued Ernst Middendorp’s side.

Ahead of their match against United at the FNB Stadium on Saturday Middendorp had stressed the need to eliminate the errors that helped their opponents in previous fixtures this season.

Match report here

Mistakes haunt the Glamour Boys

Kaizer Chiefs had the better of the chances in the first hour of the game, but two mistakes allowed Daylon Claasen to grab a brace. First Daniel Akpeyi, returning to the side after sitting out the Nedbank Cup win over Royal Eagles, committed a howler that allowed Claasen to open the scoring. Then poor marking saw Judas Moseamedi afford space in the box and he would tee up Claasen’s second.

Chiefs showed character and were able to pull one back through Samir Nurkovic before Willard Katsande spurned a chance for a late equaliser.

For Middendorp the match would have had a frustrating sense of deja vu as his former club tormented him again with their counterattacking brand of football.

The coach said that the kind of mistakes Kaizer Chiefs made in their 2-1 defeat should not happen.

“We had a Telkom cup game in the semi-final, we brought them in the game 1-0, everybody knows, a back pass too short,” Middendorp told SuperSport TV after the match.

“Second game we brought them back into the game, on the last line, totally unnecessary and today again.

“I said it before, minimise your things [individual errors], we have done so far not bad, the defence, the rest defence was good, but this was a casual moment just to offer this opportunity, ja, 0-1 down.

“I said it before, this should not happen, and then you’re in a miserable situation. Unfortunately, it happens.”

Maritzburg United ‘lucky’ to beat Kaizer Chiefs

Maritzburg United coach Eric Tinkler conceded that his team were lucky to come away from the FNB Stadium with three points.

Tinkler took responsibility for a poor start to the game by his charges. He said that he had tried to be too clever with some of his tactical adjustments.

“I thought our first-half performance was not great at all to be brutally honest and I’ll take full responsibility for that because as I mentioned, I made some tactical changes and I was trying to be a little bit too clever, and obviously it didn’t work for us in that first-half,” Tinkler said on SuperSport TV after the match.

“Even in the first-half I had to make a change, I had to put Siyanda [Xulu] to play with the back three but ultimately we were way too defensive, we were looking to soak up a lot pressure and we were really poor in that first-half.

“So, unfortunately, I had to sacrifice Siyanda, as I said, not a fault of his rather by mine, go back to our normal structure, bring Pogiso [Sanoka] out and far better performance in the second half.

“I think you know we started to look a lot more organised, we looked a lot better going forward, we started to create chances and we got the goals, but we had to hang on, to be honest. They’re [Chiefs] always going to be a threat from set-pieces, that’s been their biggest strength this season, the amount of goals they scored from that, they got one,” he continued.

“Then we had to hold on to be brutally honest, ja we’ll take the three points and run, it wasn’t a great first half, better second-half but maybe we can count ourselves a little bit lucky today.”