Hunt: ‘Kaizer Chiefs still the biggest club in SA’

Kaizer Chiefs’ former coach Gavin Hunt has once again explained why it did not happen for him at the mighty Amakhosi in 2021.

KAIZER CHIEFS CAME AT THE WRONG TIME

Speaking to the media after his 1000-match milestone as a coach, the four-time league champion said he was desperate to find a new job after Bidvest Wits went defunct.

Additionally, he arrived at Kaizer Chiefs to find the team in urgent need of a rebuilding but management did not deliver the support.

“Very disappointing for me because, you know, in my time in the 80s they were the biggest club,” Hunt told iDiski Times. “They are still the biggest club in South Africa in terms of support base. But for me, it was the wrong time, the wrong place. It was a forced move. It was during Covid and Wits had just been sold, and I was the only one without a job after the players were bought by different clubs at the end of the season.

“I was like okay here we go. I am going to take some time out, but I don’t want some time out. Then I got a phone call, and they said ‘listen, this is what’s happening. We’ve got a FIFA ban; we can’t sign any player’.

“I said to them the team needs an overhaul and if you allow me to do it then it’s the right project for me. They said ‘perfect’. We agreed, ’let’s get through this year’ and when I looked at it, it was clear the team was really done.

“They were short, they were doing badly but I saw the [CAF] Champions League was a big gap for us. We didn’t have the pace, and the Champions League football is slow and boring, and I felt this team can have ago at it and we got into the semi-final, and I got fired with two matches to go. I was so upset about that. If they did not want me the next year, that’s fine. But leave me to finish.

“But then there were a lot of things I maybe should have kept my mouth shut. There were a few things I spoke out on and said in meetings and in confidence and obviously it was taken somewhere else, and they did not like the way it was there.

“I said to them like when Jeff Butler went in there [in the 80s] he got rid of Ace [Ntsoelengoe] and Teenage Dladla and there was a huge uproar. But next up he won five trophies because that’s what the club needed.

“Now it’s happening exactly like I said back then and a guy [Nasreddine Nabi] is coming in and saying this and he wants to change everything, the whole team and now they are listening [but they didn’t listen to me].

“That was disappointing but no bad vibes and no bad feelings. I was just disappointed I never had a chance to build a team of my own. That wasn’t my team that I coached at Chiefs. It was Ernst’s [Middendorp] team, which needed rebuilding, and they promised me we were going to do it, but we never did, and I faced the brunt and with two games to go,” concluded Hunt.

DID THE CLUB FAIL HUNT?

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