Publications
Partners
Cape Town - Kaizer Chiefs and Bafana Bafana legend Doctor Khumalo has slammed Absa Premiership strikers for not scoring enough goals and for leaving the burden to defenders.
Khumalo pointed out that two of the three leading scorers in the PSL are currently defensive players with only Chiefs' attacking midfielder Lebogang Manyama standing out.
As such, the 1996 Africa Cup of Nations winner takes the view that scoring goals remains a problem in South African football and this needs to be addressed.
He told Soccer Laduma: "Two of our three joint Top Goal Scorers are defenders, with two goals in two matches each, so far in Erick Mathoho and Mzwanele Mahashe, who have found the back of the net for Kaizer Chiefs and Bloemfontein Celtic respectively.
"Lebogang Manyama is the only attacker with two goals so far. Should we be worried? I was doing some research when I came across a television programme that was breaking down last season's LaLiga. At some stage, Lionel Messi was on 34 goals with a couple of games to go. Karim Benzema was sitting on 21 together with Luis Suarez and I found that very interesting.
"That gave me a number of question marks especially looking at how much we struggle to find the back of the net. That we have defenders leading the charts, is it something to worry about or is it too soon to judge?
"Anyway, knowing how this game operates, based on what most of the teams have in their striking force and if their form so far is anything to go by, we should be getting worried. When you sign players, you can't go out there to sign strikers in search of goals and then you go three to four games without them finding the back of the net.
"That should be worrying for any coach because you sign players to improve what you already have. You know what you're lacking and you go out there to get it. You need to see glimpses of improvement from the acquisitions you made. If your team missed chances last season, you can't start the new season hitting crossbars and taking shots off target and expect a different result at the end of the season. It means the problem wasn't fixed."
