Baxter banks on evergreen ‘Yeye’
RENEILWE Letsholonyane’s resurgence is a classic tale of a player written off on the grounds of age after being told to go and wind down his career elsewhere by a club he’d given his all to.
Earlier this week, the for mer Kaizer Chiefs’ midfield maestro was like a spring chicken on the pitch for new club SuperSport United in a 6-1 pounding of Orlando Pirates in a league match in Nelspruit.
While many on social media hurled insults at Amakhosi for severing ties with a player clearly still capable of delivering the goods at the end of the previous season, Stuart Baxter – his coach at SuperSport – was the least surprised by Letsholonyane’s Man of the Match performance on Tuesday night.
“He’s an absolute pleasure to manage,” Baxter said of Letsholonyane, who he met in July 2012 on his arrival to take over the reins at Chiefs, leading them to an unprecedented two Premier League titles in three years.
“Yeye”, 34, was a vital cog of that side, and the coach previously said it was a no-brainer to recruit him to join SuperSport when it was clear Chiefs were ready to cut him loose.
“Sometimes you get the best years of your career and then you get two or three more, free to use all your experience and have a free hit.
“I think that’s what happened with him. He is taking it one season at a time and maybe at the end of this one he will probably go ‘Oh, that was great. Let’s go again.’
“For me, he has one or two seasons, easily.”
Baxter will be hoping the mid- fielder can replicate the same kind of for m today that was on show when he grabbed the equaliser for Matsatsantsa against Pirates in midweek before setting up defender Michael Boxall to give them the lead and send them on their way to a 6-1 rout of the Buccaneers, who subsequently returned to Johannesburg without a coach – the humiliation forcing Muhsin Ertugral to resign.
SuperSport face cross-town rivals Mamelodi Sundowns in the quarter-finals of the Telkom Knockout at the Lucas Moripe Stadium in Atteridgeville.
“It’s important to just keep going, and there are many examples of players like him,” said Baxter. “People thought he was done when he left Chiefs, but I knew he was a fit lad and has a good attitude.
“I asked him the other day how he is feeling and he said he just wants to play football because he feels as fresh as a daisy. And Yeye is not a complicated character. Okay, maybe sometimes he tries to do a bit too much, but I have no problem with him at all.”
Letsholonyane is a player to watch tonight, having played in multiple Soweto Derbies against Orlando Pirates in eight years at Chiefs.
His first Tshwane equivalent ended in a shameful 3-1 defeat in the opening round of the MTN8 Cup tie at Loftus Versfeld over two months ago and there is no better way to bounce back when SuperSport are on such a high and he has scored two goals – the first a solo run from the halfway line against Ajax Cape Town last weekend – in as many games to put his side back in the limelight as serious championship contenders. @superjourno