Kaizer Chiefs head coach Nasreddine Nabi says Thabo Cele and Inacio Miguel were not fit enough to start the Soweto Derby on Saturday.
Cele and Miguel have become ever-present figure in Nabi’s starting line-up since joining the club from Fakel Voronezh and Petro de Luanda respectively.
However, they both recently suffered injuries, and Nabi confirmed neither were 100% ready to start the game and be effective for the full duration in their 2-1 loss to Orlando Pirates.
“Cele is coming from an injury, and he hasn’t fully trained, and that why he was not starting, not being fully fit to start the game, or to play 90 minutes,” Nabi explained.
“Inacio, the same thing, he’s coming from an injury, and he wasn’t fully fit to give 100% performance.”
Nabi could be calling the duo on for the Nedbank Cup final next week, something he denied was a case of keeping the two key players safe for next week at Moses Mabhida Stadium.
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He did mention that this was a game of fine margins and on the basis of the performance, in his opinion, they should not have come away with zero points on the day.
“Unfortunately, it’s a game we felt we shouldn’t have lost looking at the performances of the two teams,” he explained.
“We started the game very well and feel we had the chance to kill the game, but unfortunately we did not take the opportunity to kill the game in our best moments.
“Either the referee didn’t gives is our right, we feel we should have had a penalty at 1-0 and we conceded goals whilst we were in possession of the ball and had technical mistakes, leading to conceding.
“We need to kill game in our best moments and the confidence of our opponents.”
