The former Amakhosi coach regrets the manner in which his reign unfolded
Former Kaizer Chiefs coach Calvin Johnson feels his ex-players did not follow instructions, leading to his ill-fated spell at the club.
Johnson was appointed on an interim basis after Chiefs sacked Molefi Ntseki in October 2023 but the former Chiefs Head of Academy failed to succeed, managing just six wins and seven draws in his 22 matches in charge, as Amakhosi limped to a 10th place finish.
Following the disappointing season, Chiefs opted against redeploying him in his previous role and cut ties with him after Nasreddine Nabi was appointed in the hot seat and Johnson regrets how everything unfolded at Naturena.
“I regret some of it and some of it I will cherish for the rest of my life but at the same time, I would put it down as one big learning curve even though I’m much older now but we learn every day,” Johnson said on Marawa Sports Worldwide.
‘I thought at Platinum Stars, I did the job in the same situation’
“You look at certain things, how it happened and ended and you never say you never learned anything. I learnt a lot. I got a call from the chairman who asked me to take over the team and in my naivety, I thought at Platinum Stars, I did the job in the same situation.
“I went to AmaZulu, they deducted me six points after seven games and we were like fifth or third on the log and the chairman came in tears and I said, don’t cry Mr chairman I will save the club.
“For me, this [Chiefs] was a scenario like that, the chairman asked me, can I take this team, it is not just any team, it is Kaizer Chiefs and I thought with the experience I have, I should be able to do it again [but] I didn’t.”
Johnson then laid into his former players for failing to follow his instructions on matchdays, hinting that he might have been sabotaged by the playing unit.
‘I feel that with my technical team, we gave them all the tools’
“There was a time I had eight clean sheets but we didn’t win the games. If you analyse a little further, we had five shots on goal, we gave them goals and those are not things in a normal training session you were able to identify because when you are playing you expect them to move a certain way with the ball but you don’t expect them to not man-manage the game,” he added.
“The bad loss we had in the Nedbank Cup, we had like 20 shots on goal we couldn’t score even from one-on-ones. We were winning the derby twice but we couldn’t manage the game in live form, as a coach, you can only manage the game before and halftime.
“I feel that with my technical team, we gave them all the tools to identify what is right and wrong. Whatever we did on the training pitch, was; ‘Yes we are getting it right.’”
