Marked for Edson Castillo
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Player ratings18 Jan 2027
Successful dribbles: 36. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Market18 Jan 2027
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Ajax Cape Town waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Kaizer Chiefs is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Match16 Jan 2027
8 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Market18 Jan 2027
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Market18 Jan 2027
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Market18 Jan 2027
“It was not right for me. I am not going to explain why to anybody except the people I owe an explanation to.” A deal agreed between two clubs, and a player who declined to be part of it.
Squad18 Jan 2027
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.
Transfer targets18 Jan 2027
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. River Plate have kept their man, and Kaizer Chiefs go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Inácio Miguel 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad21 Dec 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Ashley Du Preez
14 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Kaizer Chiefs lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market21 Dec 2026
Only the photograph left for Thabo Mokwena
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Thabo Mokwena will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Kaizer Chiefs the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Match19 Dec 2026
4 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Squad21 Dec 2026
35 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
Squad21 Dec 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.
Match19 Dec 2026
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Kaizer Chiefs can tell you which week it ends in.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Khanyisa Mayo was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
The dugout21 Dec 2026
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Player ratings21 Dec 2026
A mark of 7.41, and nobody in the ground would argue with it. He was involved in everything that mattered and most of what did not.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad14 Dec 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Ashley Du Preez
23 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Kaizer Chiefs lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad14 Dec 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.
Player ratings14 Dec 2026
Successful dribbles: 21. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
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 dugout14 Dec 2026
The manager makes an example of Lebohang Maboe
“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.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Words at Kaizer Chiefs training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Bradley Cross 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.
Player ratings14 Dec 2026
7.52, and no serious argument from anybody who was there. Kaizer Chiefs had eleven men on the pitch and one of them decided how it went.
The dugout14 Dec 2026
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Siphesihle Ndlovu trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The dugout14 Dec 2026
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Percy Dolly after the 0‑0 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.