Useful Maart!

Prior to the beginning of the curre season, Kaizer Chiefs signed Yusuf Maart from Sekhukhune United in a deal rumoured to be worth several million Rand. With coach Arthur Zwane looking to rebuild an engine room that had underperformed for a number of seasons, the 27-year-old midfielder was linked with Amakhosi before

last season even ended. It took a month into the off-season for the deal to get over the line as he signed a three-year contract with a two-year option. There has been much talk about the player’s performances, his Soweto Derby

wonder goal, what his best position is and why he has been dropped from th Bafana Bafana squad of late. In this feature, Soccer Laduma investigates whether the Orlando Pirates development product is living up to expectations, how his form compares

to last season and many other key talking points.

Journey to the top

For a player that turned 27 in July, it’s been an unconventional route to the top of the local game. Yusuf Maart moved to Johannesburg to join Orlando Pirates in 2016 after being scouted at the SAB U21 National Championships in Polokwane. He impressed in the then MultiChoice (now DStv) Diski Challenge, but the pathway to regular firstteam minutes wasn’t really there. He got two Bucs outings in the 2016/17 season, playing a few minutes against EC Bees in the Nedbank Cup and then a few more minutes in the final league match against Golden Arrows. Kjell Jonevret was the coach at the time, so it is not clear whether he drove Maart’s selection or whether the club encouraged the Swede to involve him.

Two seasons on loan at Cape Umoya United followed, playing under Roger de Sa and Dominic Isaacs. Those years allowed him to get regular game-time in a strong league and to be closer to home.

Like so many loanees from the top clubs, there wasn’t really a route or plan to reintegrate him at the Soweto giants, who didn’t renew his contract. Sekhukhune United signed him and he led them to promotion to the topflight before a year of DStv Premiership football. In those 12 months, he captained a side that excelled in the early part of the season but whose form

nosedived in the final 15 matches to relegation levels – thankfully they had a points buffer to stay

up with relative ease.

Domza on Maart

To get an idea of the player that Maart was in perhaps his key formative development years on loan in the second tier, we spoke to his coach at the time, Dominic Isaacs, and he had the following to say…

“I coached Yusuf Maart at Cape Umoya. He is just a good footballer, but he is also a very good human being. There’s always a smile on his face and he seldom gets angry. He loves his family and his son is his world. I told him that he needed to put Atlantis on the map and he has certainly done that. Kids need to be given hope and should be allowed to dream big and have positive role models. In terms of his strengths, he is a natural footballer. He possesses good technique and is equally good with both feet, which is rare. He also has a high endurance capacity. In general, he is your modern midfielder in that he can tackle, is technically good and he has good vision and distribution. You never see him shy away from asking for the ball. But I know he can score a lot more goals and he needs to shoot more often! I used to change systems during matches and it wasn’t a problem for Maart. I would use him as a number eight or number 10 but depending on the game plan – he can play any position in midfield. I know he likes to play deep in order to touch the ball constantly.”

Is Broos right about Maart?

Hugo Broos has begun to leave Maart out of his Bafana Bafana squads since the player moved to Kaizer Chiefs. The Belgian coach appeared to really rate him last year as he handed the midfielder a true debut as a substitute against Ethiopia in World Cup qualifying before handing him another run-out in the return fixture. He also came on as a

sub in the 2-1 loss to Morocco, sloppily giving possession away

before the Atlas Lions went on to home 1-0 win against Ethiopia at Moses Mabhida Stadium, playing alongside Teboho Mokoena and Njabulo Ngcobo in the midfield three. Before that, Maart had made his official FIFA debut in the COSAFA Cup success, but being selected for qualifiers for major tournaments is far more significant.

When September’s friendlies against Botswana and Sierra Leona rolled around, Maart was left out of the squad. Now a Chiefs player, Maart’s omission drew direct questions from the media and coach Broos responded

as follows: “I think Yusuf is a little bit a victim of the bad start of Chiefs. The same with Dolly. Chiefs have not started the season well. And I don’t think… when I see Yusuf play, it’s not the Yusuf I know from Sekhukhune. I think they’re struggling a little bit also

with confidence because the results are not there, the pressure is there. For now, ok, let’s wait for the next two friendly games, but he stays on the list for the next games and if Yusuf can again achieve his level from Sekhukhune, then there is no problem. But I think now it’s not good for him to take him with the team because the confidence issue is so big with the results of Chiefs.”

Despite what Broos said at the time, Maart didn’t make the squad

against Mozambique and Angola either. He had been in the 30-man preliminary squad but was left out when the squad was cut to 23 players. Not only that, but Miguel Timm made his debut and did well, so the route back to Bafana could be blocked for Maart.

After the squad f or November was announced, Broos again talked about his reasons for leaving out Maart, saying, “Performances… do you think it’s enough when he scored a brilliant goal? Everyone was saying that Maart was not playing well with Chiefs, I’m not saying it, I read it – I read it in the papers. He was not playing well and then suddenly he scores a fantastic goal and then you will say, ‘Ah, you see a fantastic goal’. He’s again (on form). Why? Because he scored that goal? No, it’s not like that and when you select like that, then every time you will have 25 new players because there’s always (players) who are playing, in that moment, well. It doesn’t work like that. So, Maart is someone we look at every week like we did with the 40 other players, so if Maart is

again on the level he was at Sekhukhune, what he didn’t

do now until the (Soweto Derby), you agree? Okay, it’s

The first thing we can look at are his shots. Although he isn’t a regular goalscorer, it gives an indication of how high up the pitch he is playing, to some extent. At ekhukhune, he was averaging 2.1 ts for every 90 minutes of action and t has not dropped much at Chiefs, at 90. That is no surprise because he was the main man and captain at Babina Noko. Last season, Maart broadly played two different roles at Sekhukhune: either he was part of the midfield two or he played ahead of two other midfielders, something they tended to do against the top four or five sides in the country to be

more solid centrally. In those matches, he would have two midfielders behind

him, usually two of Willard Katsande, Seth Parusnath and Tlotlo Leepile, amongst others.

We can see from the stats that he is creating more now at the Soweto giants. His chances created numbers are higher and so are his dribbles – in fact, they’ve gone up a lot at Amakhosi. We also see that he is making more ball recoveries high up the pitch, whereas Sekhukhune were a defensive side who sat deep and looked for Maart to hit passes to the wingers on transitions. Despite being in a side that had less of the ball, he is actually making more successful tackles this season, even if he is winning fewer of his challenges and isn’t making quite as many interceptions, something that is easier in a compact, defensive side with small spaces to defend like Sekhukhune. In terms of basic passing numbers, Maart is making more of them per game at Chiefs, which is no surprise and not particularly telling – the Glamour Boys have much more possession than his former club. The accuracy of his passes has increased too, largely because Sekhukhune didn’t bother with patient possession play, but instead looked for quick and early penetration to their wide players or to striker Chibuike Ohizu.

Although these stats don’t tell us all that much, they do at least show that Maart’s numbers haven’t dropped off. It would be interesting if Broos could explain exactly what it is about the player’s performances that he isn’t happy with. Maybe he just doesn’t like seeing Maart receiving in deeper areas, trying to keep the ball patiently or pressing higher up. We may never know.