There have been prolonged calls for the Kaizer Chiefs team to have at least one local assistant coach to help head coach Nasreddine Nabi to bridge potential cultural gaps and help players better understand his coaching methods.
Throughout last season Chiefs backed Nabi's decision to bring in any assistant he wanted in the technical team, and Nabi himself pointed out that the nationality of a coach shouldn't matter, only knowledge and quality.
Despite that, critics feel a local assistant coach could make the difference for Nabi for the new season.
From the marketing department, Jessica Motaung recently discussed Chiefs' challenges, highlighting the factor of culture.
"Sometimes it is coaching style and sometimes there isn’t a fit with players or it’s a cultural issue so we have to be fair when things don’t work out," Motaung told the media.
Though, this could've been a hypothetical note and doesn't mean Motaung is saying Chiefs have a cultural issue in their technical team.
So, the Siya crew spoke to insiders at Amakhosi to determine whether they could change their stance on the matter.
Sources close to the club have indicated that Chiefs believe the technical team structure they have at the moment is well suited to take the side back to its glory days.
A Naturena insider added that the football department and the board are happy with the way the technical team is set up now, with an emphasis on the universal language of the beautiful game.
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"The team believes that football is a universal sport with a universal language and it doesn't really matter who the coach or assistant coach is as they all understand football language. The team apparently thinks that even when they had local head coaches with local assistant coaches the results were not forthcoming. So they believe it's not about who is the assistant coach but what the team can do," the source told Soccer Laduma.
A second insider close to the technical structures stated that management believes that Amakhosi are also moving in the right direction with the team's development structures under local coaches.
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"The senior team has players from all over the world and it doesn't really matter whether the coach is local or foreign as long as the development structures have local coaches who understand the culture of both the club and the players. So the team doesn't believe that having a whole foreign led senior technical team is bad for the club or players at all. That's why they believe that the Nasreddine Nabi led technical team is right for the club," the second source revealed.
Soccer Laduma contacted Chiefs for official comment on these options but there was no response at the time of publishing this story.
The club's stance on maintaining their current technical setup, despite their inconsistency in the PSL, suggests confidence in Nabi's long-term vision. Having secured the Nedbank Cup, the first trophy in a decade for Chiefs, appears to have bought him significant leeway in how he structures his technical team.
As the squad heads to the Netherlands for pre-season training, the continuity in the coaching department indicates Chiefs' management believes results will improve naturally through familiarity rather than through structural changes.
