Zwane impressed by Sithebe's debut

Kaizer Chiefs head coach Arthur Zwane has singled out debutant Siyethemba Sithebe as one of the outstanding players this past weekend, despite their 1-0 loss to Royal AM in an opening DSTV Premiership fixture this season.

Sithebe, who had spent about seven months not playing after his previous club AmaZulu decided to sideline after catching the wind that he had signed a pre-contract agreement with Chiefs in January earlier this year, played the full 90 minutes at the Chatsworth stadium.

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The 29year-old covered some ground in this game, won 50% of his challenges and 94 % on his passes completion, more than any other midfielder in the Chiefs team.

Zwane gives his report: œThe new players did well -player for a team of Kaizer Chiefs caliber-you will always find it difficult and some maybe they were playing for the first time in crowd where the stadium is back to full capacity, they could even hear our supporters cheering them up-giving them that extra boost and it reared them up, some of them.

œSo Sithebe did well, considering that he™s been out of the game for some time. At some point I didn™t think he would last for 90 minutes but when I saw him pushing and giving his all I said let me leave him on the field because that™s the kind of attitude we need players who can dig deeper so that attitude I think I was so pleased and impressed at the same time

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There has also been a lot of hype around the acquisition of Bafana Bafana midfielder Yusuf Maart, who joined on a reported R6-million transfer from Sekhukhune United.

With the pitch not favorably to his kind of football and Royal AM forcing a compact game in the midfield, he could not exact himself properly but Zwane believes that he will be alright.

œAnd yah Maart as well, there is no doubt he is a special talent and we still want to work with them in terms of the combination planned, that tactical understanding and the flexibility in the middle, but I think they did very well Zwane concluded.

By Velile Mnyandu