Chiefs will deal with Ntwari incident internally, says Kaze

Kaizer Chiefs will address the issue of goalkeeper Fiacre Ntwari in private after he refused to come off the field during their Carling Knockout first round 5-4 defeat to Stellenbosch on Sunday, interim co-coach Cedric Kaze said.

Chiefs were planning to bring on Bruce Bvuma at the end of extra time to face the penalty shoot-out, but Ntwari was defiant and refused to leave the field.

The Rwandan international faced the penalties and went on to save the first one from Andre de Jong to give Amakhosi the advantage. However, Tashreeq Morris and Dillan Solomons missed for Chiefs to bow out at the first hurdle in the competition.

Kaze explained why Ntwari refused to be substituted.

“He [Ntwari] felt comfortable to go to the penalties and help the team. It came from a good intention, maybe the way [he behaved] wasn’t as good as it should be.

“But it’s  something that we’re going to handle internally,” Kaze said after the match.

The defeat has put the future of Kaze and Kalil Ben Youssef in serious doubt, with the club also struggling in the Premiership. Kaze said they remained the coaches until they were told otherwise and they were looking forward to the international break to work on certain things.

“I believe that’s a question that should be directed to the management, and from this time we are the coaches of Kaizer Chiefs and until further notice or [until] something else decided by the management, I’m pretty sure they will let everyone know,” he said.

“I believe that it is a break that is welcomed because the past few weeks we’ve played six games, travelling to Angola and coming back, and every match has its own pressure and we never had time to work on everything that we could have wanted to work on.

“But now we will have time to settle ourselves and work on things, and get better combinations going forward to the next matches.”

Kaze said they would be working on their finishing during the break as they were not scoring enough goals.

The last time Chiefs scored two goals in a match was on August 10, when they beat Stellenbosch 2-0 in a Premiership game.