Marked for Imaad Hendricks
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings14 Dec 2026
Two goals and a mark of 8.46 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Player ratings14 Dec 2026
A brace, and Siphesihle Ndlovu takes the afternoon — 8.07
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Siphesihle Ndlovu provided it, and the 8.07 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Imaad Hendricks is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Khanyisa Mayo falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Thabiso Monyane and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
The terraces14 Dec 2026
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Mduduzi Shabalala has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
The dugout14 Dec 2026
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Player ratings14 Dec 2026
Ninety minutes of Asanele Velebayi at his very best
Marked 8.25. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Kaizer Chiefs.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Two goals and a mark of 8.63 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Imaad Hendricks is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Words at Kaizer Chiefs training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Lebohang Maboe is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Asanele Velebayi and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
The dugout5 Oct 2026
The manager makes an example of Pule Mmodi
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
A performance of 8.02 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Market5 Oct 2026
“They were honest with me, and I would rather know.” Inácio Miguel has been informed he is not in the manager's thinking at Kaizer Chiefs.
The dugout5 Oct 2026
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Kaizer Chiefs told Mduduzi Shabalala something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market7 Sep 2026
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Kaizer Chiefs, and it is not being withdrawn.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Deadline passes with 4 signed and 31 gone
That is the business done at Kaizer Chiefs until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
Market7 Sep 2026
The bid was some way short and Kaizer Chiefs did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad7 Sep 2026
At 19 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Lebohang Maboe falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Squad7 Sep 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Kaizer Chiefs this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
Boca Juniors have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Kaizer Chiefs will explain it as a decision about the team, and it may well be one. A dressing room has never once read it that way.