Can Sweswe outsmart former boss?

Innocent Kurira, Sports Reporter
BULAWAYO Chiefs Football Club coach Lizwe Sweswe will be hoping to get his first win against Norman Mapeza when his side faces FC Platinum in the Castle Lager Challenge Cup final on Saturday afternoon.

The two coaches have faced each other four times and this was in the league in 2015 and 2016.
At that time, Sweswe was in charge of Tsholotsho FC while Mapeza was with FC Platinum.
In the four meetings between Sweswe and Mapeza, the latter has won three games, and one game ended in a stalemate.

Their fifth meeting will be a cup final meaning the stakes are different altogether as cup games are never about present form or history. Rather, they are all about who is hungrier on the day.

All eyes will be on the dugouts as Sweswe has worked under Norman Mapeza before. Sweswe joined FC Platinum in 2017 as an assistant to Mapeza.

He led the miners to the league title in 2019, after Mapeza had joined South African side Chippa United.

He, however, parted ways with the club in October 2020, after reportedly falling out with the then-head coach, Pieter de Jongh.

Ahead of the cup final, Sweswe feels the game will have nothing to do with his history with FC Platinum and Norman Mapeza.

“Me facing Mapeza is good for the marketing of the game but this is a game that will be decided by the players. As coaches, we have put in the work in preparation but on the day it will be all on the players.

We may have worked together before but he has his own philosophy and I have mine so it will count for nothing that we have worked together before,” said Sweswe. — @innocentskizoe