Mngqithi looked relaxed and confident as he sat in a press conference after his team’s 2-1 loss to Free State Stars on Tuesday night, a game in which they had matched their more experienced opponents for much of the encounter until they surrendered a late goal.
Chippa had also won praise for their performance in their opener against Mamelodi Sundowns, narrowly losing 1-0 away from home against the big-spending Tshwane side.
“I do not feel under pressure; I think the team we put out against Free State Stars performed very well, bar the soft goals we conceded,” Mngqithi told reporters after the Stars match. “But we should take a lot of confidence from this performance because this was a very young and inexperienced group that we had on the pitch.
“We have a total of eight players to come into the first team, most of them who will be regulars in the season. That will make a massive difference to us.”
Unfortunately for him, he will not be around to find just how much of a difference those returning players will make, having been fired yesterday.
It is unclear who will take over, though hot favourite for now must be the man who got them promotion, Roger Sikhakhane, who was moved into a technical director’s role when the club decided to go with Mngqithi. Alternatively, they might decide to look for a coach with more PSL experience such as Roger de Sa or Owen da Gama.
Mngqithi now holds the unfortunate distinction of being the first PSL coach fired in each of the past two seasons, having been shown the door after just five games at AmaZulu in the 2011-12 campaign.
Meanwhile, last night Kaizer Chiefs beat Mamelodi Sundowns 2-1 at the Soccer City Complex during the PSL encounter.
In the the first half both teams dished out nothing much to write home about, which resulted in ding-dong performance. It was a case of huffing and puffing!
However, in the second half, Chiefs opened the scoring through Siyabonga Nkosi who outpaced the Downs’ defence to score the first goal, using his weaker left foot.
With Amakhosi now in charge Downs’ were made to commit silly errors and the corner kick from Simphiwe Tshabalala and header from Nkosi landed on another header from Nkata to make it 2-0.
Johaan Neeskens Downs’ coach made calculative substitutions, although that did not come to fruition. Defender Daniels slotted a hard and low shot, leaving Khune no chance, after the ball hit the far righ post and the back of the latter before hitting the net.
For Chiefs die hard fans this was a sweet revenge having lost to them in the MTN8 knock-out 4-1.
