Kaizer Chiefs assistant coach Khalil Ben Youssef has made it clear that in their eyes, as the team's technical panel, there's no young player in the squad, saying all the youngsters in the team are getting playing chances on merit.
A few of Chiefs' youngsters, who graduated from their MultiChoice Diski Challenge DDC stream, impressed in their 2-0 league opener win over Stellenbosch at Athlone Stadium on Sunday. Chiefs' next game is against Polokwane City at FNB Stadium tomorrow 7.30pm.
Centre-back Aden McCarthy, who was only starting his second official game for the first team since his promotion from DDC side last year, was voted man of the match, while other club's recent youth development graduates like Mduduzi Shabalala and Mfundo Vilakazi showed flashes of brilliance.
For us we don't see the age...we don't have young players. If you deserve to play, you will play for the team, so we don't think about the name, the age but we only think about the performance, especially in training,'' Ben Youssef said.
Aden was with us last season but his performances weren't very good and we discussed it with him. He kept working hard and he was one of our best players during the preseason. He deserves to play, we don't give him gifts but it's his performances from training that allow him to play. We also thank our DDC coaches for preparing these players for us.