Fernando Da Cruz Faces Early Criticism at Kaizer Chiefs
Fernando Da Cruz has barely warmed the Kaizer Chiefs bench, yet the temperature around him is already rising.
The Frenchman’s early assessment of his squad — cautious, measured, and laced with caveats about depth and tactical variety — has not landed well with everyone. For one former Amakhosi forward, it has set off alarm bells.
“Already making excuses”
Fees Moloi, who knows the weight of the Kaizer Chiefs badge, has gone straight for the jugular.
To him, Da Cruz’s public hints that the squad may not be equipped to fight on all fronts, especially with CAF Confederation Cup duties on the horizon and a sluggish transfer window, sound less like realism and more like pre-emptive damage control.
“Da Cruz is already making excuses so that if he fails to improve the team, he would be able to say ‘I told you so’,” Moloi told KickOff.
That line sets the tone. In Moloi’s eyes, this is not a coach setting expectations. It is a coach shielding himself.
He draws a direct line between Da Cruz and former boss Nasreddine Nabi, a comparison that carries its own sting.
“Da Cruz is the same as Nabi. His statement reminds me of the Tunisian coach. It is his job to get the team ready. It seems he took the job blindly,” Moloi said.
For a club of Chiefs’ stature, “transition” is never accepted as a free pass. The demand is simple: compete. For everything. All the time.
The badge comes with a mandate
That is the core of Moloi’s argument. If you sit in that dugout, you do not talk down the squad before a ball is kicked. You find a way to make it competitive.
Moloi questions why any coach would walk into Naturena without the conviction that he can elevate what is already there.
The criticism goes beyond tactics or formations. It cuts into the professionalism of the appointment itself and the alignment — or lack of it — between the coach and the board.
“If Kaizer Chiefs are not ready to compete, then what is he doing here?” Moloi asked. “He was brought in to prepare the team and make it competitive. This coach does not seem confident in himself.”
The slow churn of the transfer window has only sharpened the debate. Da Cruz has hinted that the current group may not be enough for a title push plus a continental campaign. Moloi’s response is blunt: if reinforcements were non-negotiable, that should have been nailed down before the ink dried on the contract.
Boardroom questions, dressing-room tension
That is where the pressure now sits. Chiefs’ hierarchy must decide: back Da Cruz aggressively in the market or hold him to the task of extracting more from what he has.
Moloi’s stance is unforgiving. To him, the Frenchman has walked into a giant of the South African game without fully grasping the constraints — or without laying out his own conditions clearly enough.
“Why did he accept the job at a team that is not ready?” Moloi said. “He should have told management from the beginning that ‘For me to be able to make the team compete, you will have to strengthen here and there’.”
Da Cruz, only just in the door, now finds himself in a familiar Kaizer Chiefs storm: a demanding fan base, a restless club legend calling him out, and a squad he has publicly suggested may not yet match the club’s ambitions.
The season has not even started, but the margin for error already feels brutally small.
