Ex-Kaizer Chiefs midfielder Willard Katsande has urged the club's supporters to to be patient with new head coach Nasreddine Nabi and reckons it would take at least four windows to build a league title-winning side.
Chiefs finished a disappointing 10th position on the standings last season, their lowest finish in the PSL era. The shock outcome prompted management to act more aggressively in their search for a new coach.
That route led them to Tunisian-Belgian mentor Nabi, whom the Soweto giants had failed to come to an agreement with the season prior. The disagreement is understood to have come from the club's unwillingness to allow him to bring his own technical team of specialists.
This time around, the 58-year-old was allowed to bring his own technical team.
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Additionally, Nabi comes with plenty of credentials, including being a two-time domestic treble winner with Young Africans of Tanzania.
For all of the 59-year-old's previous success, Amakhosi legend Katsande has pleaded with the Khosi Nation to exercise patience in terms of the expectations.
"For me, I'm 100% positive, even from the beginning when they hired the coach," Katsande told journalists at the Prince Mangosuthu Legacy Cup in Ulundi, where he was part of a star-studded squad of Kaizer Chiefs Legends that took on KZN Legends.
"You need to respect what the management has done, which is to appoint the coach. We just need to support whatever we have. This is the generation that will take us [to the top].
"I'm 100% confident that the coach is going to do well, and even the new players who came in and those who have been there for a long time are also going to contribute.
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"The most important thing for us as supporters and football lovers is we need to be patient with the coach because football is a project whereby it's not overnight. Maybe for some coaches, the philosophy starts rubbing [off] on players after six months. Some hit the ground running as quickly as possible," added the man famously known as 'Salt Pepper'.
The Zimbabwean was part of the last Glamour Boys squad to lift silverware in 2015.
"But the most important thing is, can we see the positive out of everything we are trying to do? The coach needs at least four transfer windows for us to say: 'Compete to win the league'."
Chiefs started their 2024/25 campaign with a 2-1 win over Marumo Gallants on Saturday and next face AmaZulu FC at home on 25 September.