Christian Saile showed glimpses of promise in his half-season at Kaizer Chiefs last term, but was it enough? By Mazola Molefe.

Kaizer Chiefs had gone had already spent several weeks on trial left off,” the Chiefs mentor said a few through an exhaustive at Chiefs. days after the club had confirmed a deal process to find a striker when The Glamour Boys ended up giving running until June 2026.

Christian Saile landed on the Naturena doorstep in January – signed for an undisclosed fee from Zambia’s Nchanga Rangers. Was he what coach Arthur Zwane had been looking for?

The jury was out. The Amakhosi mentor made conflicting statements about Bonfils-Caleb Bimenyimana, another foreign forward, at the start of the 2022/23 season as his tenure was taking off.

“He is not what we are looking for,” he had told journalists at the launch of the new DStv Premiership campaign in August after the Burundian international Bimenyimana had already spent several weeks on trial at Chiefs.

The Glamour Boys ended up giving Bimenyimana a two-year contract before the transfer deadline.

Zwane was a lot more measured with his comments when the Soweto giants confirmed the arrival of Saile, a 23-year- old from DR Congo known to be an explosive striker with an eye for goal.

Like Bimenyimana, he had also made his way to South Africa to be assessed by Zwane and his technical team. This was the coach’s feedback once Saile had put pen to paper: “He is a scoring machine; he has been scoring goals for his previous clubs and we just want him to continue where he left off,” the Chiefs mento said a few days after the club had confirmed a deal running until June 2026.

With a prolific record last year, when he helped Rangers gain promotion to the top-flight MTN Super League in Zambia, the Glamour Boys were eager – and perhaps even desperate – to see Saile continue that purple patch.

He scored 19 goals during the campaign, which left the club with no choice but to eventually sell him, with suitors around the continent lining up.
“I think he is going to fit in our way of play. When we brought him here to have a closer look at him, it was key for us to look at how he is going to adapt,” continued Zwane.

Chiefs were heavily criticised for the approach they took in their hunt for a striker, with the coach publicly slating the recruitment strategy used under his predecessors – he insisted it needed to be a lot more like it was during his playing days, when the signings had an instant impact.

It was not just about Saile’s qualities on the pitch.

“Remember, he is from Congo and they speak French, so the things that you look at first are whether there are language-barrier issues or not.

If that’s the case, then are we going to have someone who can translate going forward or is he going to adapt quickly?” Zwane explained.

“Those are the things we look at. There were many other aspects for us to bring him closer so that, when we make the decision to bring him over, we are sure that we took the right decision. So far, so good. He is a jolly fellow; he looks so disciplined, but you know players like these ones are very committed to their game. You see passion in them, a lot of love, which is very important.”

Saile ended his first six months at Naturena with a miserly return of three goals from 16 matches, when more had been expected.

There are arguments now that he may not be an out-and-out striker or the target man to replace the trio released by AmaKhosi the season before in Samir Nurkovic , Leonardo Castro and Lazarous Kambole.

It was not long before Saile came under some criticism from a faction of the Chiefs supporters, owing to the frustration of not winning any silverware while rivals Orlando Pirates were flourishing. Add to that the striker’s poor conversation rate.

“If you look at the chances that we created, Saile was in the right place,” Zwane jumped to the forward’s defence following their loss to Pirates and subsequent elimination in the Nedbank Cup semi-finals in May.

The Buccaneers would eventually be crowned champions on the back of beating Sekhukhune United 2–1 to win a second trophy of the season, while Chiefs’ drought stretched to eight years. Zwane will not give up on what he views to be an asset.

“It’s better than having a player on the field who doesn’t understand what you expect from him. He was in the right area at the right time; unfortunately, he just couldn’t convert. We cannot now put the blame on him because of that. That’s the nature of football – you win some and you lose some. Sometimes you take those opportunities, sometimes you don’t take them,” the coach said.