After Maritzburg United parted ways with coach Ernst Middendorp on Tuesday, Fadlu Davids has emerged as favourite to take over at the club, Sowetan has learnt.
Middendorp guided the Team of Choice to safety in the recently concluded season, but it appears the club was not satisfied with the 12th-place finish.
Davids, who parted ways with Orlando Pirates recently, could make a return to the club he guided to a fourth-place finish and to the Nedbank Cup final in the 2017/18 season before moving to the Soweto giants.
After Pirates announced that his contract won’t be renewed, speculation arose that he would return to Maritzburg, while he was also linked with a move to SuperSport United.
Davids refused to comment about his future.
“A lot of journalists have been calling me wanting to talk about my time at Pirates and where I’m going. Please give me time as I’m on holiday, and I will only talk about this after a week,” Davids told Sowetan yesterday.
Maritzburg chair Farouk Kadodia could not be reached for comment but told Sowetan sister’s publication TimesLIVE that they parted ways with the coach because they were always fighting relegation.
“We will make a full statement soon. The main reason is the reality that we cannot keep fighting relegation,” Kadodia said.
“We have invested a lot in football development overall but especially in the past two years. We supported the coach fully and the board felt that by investing so much money every year we cannot continuously be fighting relegation.”
Meanwhile, SuperSport CEO Stan Matthews said they had received many applications for the position of head coach and won’t respond to questions about specific names.
“I can’t respond to rumours. Our head coach appointment will only be made in the last week of June,” Matthews responded through a text.
“We have many applications, so I’m not commenting on any specific names. Andre Arendse remains in charge as interim head coach while we navigate the off-season programmes and activities.”
The Tshwane side has been linked with Davids, Stuart Baxter, Gavin Hunt and now Middendorp.
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