Amakhosi assistant coach Fani Madida believes that The Amakhosi class of 2007 – 2008 will be able to emulate the success of years gone by, and will be able to carry off some silver ware when the end of the season comes around. While Chiefs might not have had many wins in their pre-season games, Madida feels that Chiefs have made a lot of progress, since Muhsin Ertugral assumed the role as head coach back in June. Since the resumption of pre-season training the team have improved in many areas which has included an improvement in the physical, tactical and technical aspects of their game.

With the new season just over a week away Madida is looking forward to being part of what he hopes will be a championship winning set up, the atmosphere been created in the Amakhosi camp is one that Madida believes will breed success for Chiefs. Speaking to kaizerchiefs.com on Monday Madida is insistant that Chiefs have made great strides during their pre-season preparations and are close to having the team at their optimal best.

Process of elimination

The Chiefs assistant coach is adamant that the clubs technical team are on top of things and have gone along way towards identifying and finding solutions for a number of areas that needed strengthening. Madida said “we identified areas where we had to do some fixing up and we have”. He continues further “the coach admitted that we needed to do some patching up work at the back, so we added some new faces in defence and I can say that we were better defensively on Saturday against Pirates then we had been in any of our previous warm up games”. By looking at the areas where the team has faced the most challenges Madida says has helped the team find shape and strength, as he said “we have over the past few months looked game by game as to what we have been doing wrong and what has been working for us. Through a process of eradication we have turned the negative aspects of our game into positive ones, if one looks at our performance against Pirates in the Vodacom Challenge and the way we played this past weekend you will think that Pirates were playing against two different teams”.

Getting there

Madida though has not shied away from the fact that a collective improvement is required from the team, if they are to lay the ground work for a successful season by beginning the campaign with a row of victories first up. The idea is for the gradual improvement being made by the team since they returned to training in June to become more rapid, “we know we need to improve on our pre-season results, and I feel we will we have around eights days before the season kicks off. We are have progressed far down the track to being where we need to be in terms of over all readiness, and we will use the remaining week to make sure that we go beyond being 100% ready when the season starts next week” added Madida.