SuperSport United coach Gavin Hunt believes his time at Kaizer Chiefs was ill-timed and it contributed to his exit barely a year after taking over.
The experienced coach took over at Amakhosi in the 2020/21 season, taking over from Ernst Middendorp. In the Premier Soccer League, Hunt struggled for consistency but in the Caf Champions League, he managed to help the team reach the final.
Hunt was fired with the Glamour Boys placed 11th on the table, and his successor Stuart Baxter lost in the final against Al Ahly. Hunt has now explained why things didn't work out with the Soweto giants.
‘I wanted to finish the season with Chiefs’ – Hunt
“Very disappointing for me because, you know, in my time in the 80s they were the biggest club, they are still the biggest club in South Africa in terms of support base,” he told iDiski Times.
“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.”
‘It is happening like I said'
“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,” Hunt continued.
“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.”
