Orlando Pirates have confirmed that assistant coach Mandla Ncikazi has left the club to join another PSL team as a head coach.

Ncikazi has been heavily linked to his previous club, Golden Arrows.

“Orlando Pirates confirms that assistant Coach Mandla Ncikazi will be leaving the club to take up the head coach position at a team in the Premier Soccer League,” Pirates’ statement read on Thursday afternoon.

“The move follows discussions with management this morning in which Mr Ncikazi expressed his wish to pursue the opportunity to lead a team again. The club has given him its blessing to do so.”

The statement came a few hours after the club’s coach Abdeslam Ouaddou had insisted that there was nothing untoward about Ncikazi’s absence in recent games amid reports that he no longer wanted to work with him.

Last week, reports emerged that Ouaddou was trying to get rid of Ncikazi. However, the Moroccan mentor has rubbished this, reiterating that Ncikazi was still recovering from a surgery.

In August, Pirates confirmed that Ncikazi, who has served under various coaches as an assistant since his arrival in July 2021, was given a short period away from his duties to return to KwaZulu-Natal, where he was going to receive further medical attention and focus on his recovery after undergoing knee surgery.

“I think the club has issued a statement about that. He [Ncikazi] had surgery, so now he’s recovering. I wish him all the best, and that’s all I can say,” Ouaddou told a media conference on Thursday.

“We read many things and I am sorry about this. Everything is okay in our club … the environment is okay, so people must not start to create problems.

“He had surgery and I wish him the best. It’s important not to create problems. I read many things, but somebody was kissing somebody in his head [referring to himself kissing Ncikazi after beating Mamelodi Sundowns in the MTN8 semifinals last season], you can’t start to invent any stories.”