A former Kaizer Chiefs star has offered a candid assessment of the difficulties plaguing the Amakhosi attack, laying bare two issues that he believes are currently preventing the strikers from converting chances.
The festive break may offer a temporary reprieve for Chiefs, but the urgent problem of their goal drought remains frozen in time. As the Betway Premiership pauses for the 2025 AFCON tournament, ex-Amakhosi attacker Siyabonga Nkosi has argued the issue lies not on the training ground, but deep within the players’ minds.
Nkosi, a former attacking midfielder who contributed 18 goals across 68 games during his trophy-laden tenure at Chiefs, believes the club’s forwards are battling two insidious opponents: lack of composure in front of goal and deeper mental issues amplified by the pressure of playing for the Soweto giants.
Chiefs’ last competitive outing of 2025 painted a vivid picture of this crisis. On Sunday, 7 December, the club was held to a frustrating goalless draw by TS Galaxy in Mbombela. The result was not a reflection of effort, but a testament to agonising inefficiency.
In a display that highlighted their struggles, Chiefs laid siege to the Galaxy goal, registering a staggering 24 shots. This marked their highest shot tally in a league game without scoring since detailed data became available in 2020. This inability to convert chances saw Chiefs play to their second consecutive goalless draw, following a similar outcome against Chippa United just four days prior.
This season Chiefs has managed a paltry 13 goals across 13 Premiership games—nearly one-third of which came in a single 4-1 victory over Orbit College FC in early November. Despite leading the club’s scoring charts with four goals, Flavio Silva and Mduduzi Shabalala [three goals, two assists] have been unable to mask the desperate need for clinical finishing.
The recurring theme has even left co-head coach Khalil Ben Youssef sounding like a broken record, repeatedly stressing the need for improvement in the final third during post-match press conferences.
THE KAIZER CHIEFS PROBLEM THAT TRAINING CAN’T FIX
For Nkosi, the solution is not more finishing drills. He insists that Chiefs possess players who are naturally gifted scorers, listing talents like Khanyisa Mayo, Silva, Shabalala, and Mfundo Vilakazi. Amakhosi also have the likes of Etiosa Ighodaro, Wandile Duba, Tashreeq Morris, Ashley Du Preez and Luke Baartman in their squad.
“You can’t tell me that you will teach Mayo and Flavia how to score now,” Nkosi stated. Instead, the former star diagnoses a psychological block that manifests at the critical moment of truth: “It’s a matter of panic at a certain moment… Calmness comes naturally in your body. You cannot control composure. But you can control your mind.”
Nkosi’s analysis focuses on the intense, solitary nature of goalscoring, where the mind can become the enemy: “When you’re in front of goals, it’s between you and the goal, and no one else is involved… It’s you who actually makes that decision.”
He argued that the tendency to “contemplate” and “think” in front of goal is what leads to confusion and poor execution—a clear sign of the panic and lack of composure that override natural footballing instinct.
THE CHIEFS’ CO-COACH’S ONLY WEAPON
If training cannot instil finishing technique into players, Nkosi contends that Chiefs’ co-coaches Khalil Ben Youssef and Cedric Kaze’s roles should shift entirely to the mental arena.
Nkosi also suggested that the suffocating expectation and “noise” surrounding the club—the very essence of playing for a giant like Chiefs—is a unique external pressure that attacks a player’s confidence and composure, leading directly to the on-field panic witnessed against Galaxy [24 shots, zero goals] and Chippa [17 shots, zero goals].
“The only thing that you can do, as a coach, is to prepare that player mentally, how you motivate, how you actually get the players to be in the right state of mind. When they face these types of situations, because at Kaizer Chiefs there’s so much noise, and these voices can actually affect you when you get in front of the goal.”
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