Pressure is pleasure… when you put a teabag into hot water that’s when you see its true colour.
Those were the words of Steve Komphela to me last Friday night at Cape Town Stadium.
Just over 90 minutes later, his Kaizer Chiefs side were knocked out of the MTN8 by Cape Town City FC and the water around Komphela seemed to get a little hotter.
That was Amakhosi’s second loss in three days. And at a club like Chiefs, patience is a luxury.
The disturbing thing for the Glamour Boys’ fans, I reckon, isn’t the fact that they lost again on Friday, but the way in which they lost.
Matt Sim scored a goal as early as the seventh minute so they had plenty of time to recover and push on with that dream of making a third final in a row.
Yet Chiefs looked like they were trying to cut through a tough piece of meat with a butter knife.
There was no edge to their attack and only William Thwala can feel anything close to satisfied with his start to the season.
The lightning counter attack of Cape Town City proved too difficult for them to deal with and Itumeleng Khune had to pull a few saves out of the top drawer too.
They had struggled with Wits’ aggression in their league opener too, eventually being put to the sword by those aerial balls Komphela had warned his players about all week.
But if they had managed to outscore their opponents, the defensive issues would probably have been overlooked, for a while at least.
It is up front where the real worry is, even though Chiefs are not struggling to create chances.
They had more ball and threatened more than the hosts in the MTN8.
But of those chances only a handful were on target. In other words they are finding their way into the box, but they don’t know what to do when they get there.
In pre-season, one analyst told me the forwards haven’t gelled yet.
And that’s exactly what Steve has to figure out during this Fifa break or he might find that the temperature around him gets to boiling point and then we’ll see his true colours.