AmaZulu President Sandile Zungu has revealed the conversation he had with former coach Romain Folz, who was redeployed and eventually allowed to leave at the end of the 2022/23 season.
Folz was appointed as Usuthu head coach in October last year after replacing former mentor Brandon Truter.
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The KwaZulu-Natal side at the time stated that they were impressed with the work done by Folz at Marumo Gallants the previous season.
However, after a promising start, AmaZulu went through a rough patch and in April this year they made the decision to redeploy 'Fohloza' as a technical director and installed his assistant Ayanda Dlamini as caretaker coach for the last six games.
There were subsequent reports that Usuthu players had lost confidence in the 33-year old's coaching methods and Zungu has admitted that the reason they had to put Folz aside was because he had lost his dressing room.
"I was very frank with 'Fohloza', in the presence of other people, including his assistant and the GM (General Manager) at the time," Zungu said on 947's MSW.
"I said, 'Look, you may have lots of confidence from me. You may be enjoying my confidence. It's equivocal. But it's quite clear that I'm probably the only person whose confidence you enjoy.
"'The people who are gonna play on the field, you can't assemble the whole starting 11 of people you have total faith in and seems to me that they are not playing for you anymore," Zungu said.
"'And it's a high-risk strategy for me to insist on you leading the charges at this time. So, notwithstanding my confidence in you, which was undiminished even at the time'.
"I said, 'You've got to step aside, we'll get someone who will learn running, who is your assistant, to take the charges for the last six games'," he revealed. Zungu went on and suggested that the situation was untenable as the regular players had lost confidence in Folz and he was virtually the only one who believed in the project.
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"It was really a case of, 'Look, the writing is on the wall. The team is really not playing for you'," he continued.
"You've got players that really believe in your project and if you include those players, you might as well include the president's name but I'm not gonna score goals for you, I'm not gonna defend for you and that's the reality we had to face," he added.
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