Kaizer Chiefs co-coach Cedric Kaze has set the record straight on Luke Baartman’s situation at Amakhosi amid his recent remarks to play the young talent in the reserve league.
The highly-rated youngster joined Chiefs for the 2025/26 Betway Premiership season from Cape Town Spurs on a free transfer. Baartman signed with the Soweto giants alongside his teammate at Spurs, Asanele Velebay, following the club’s relegation to the ABC Motsepe League.
After the Urban Warriors got relegated to the amateur league, the PSL Dispute Resolution Chamber declared the two players as free agents after Spurs argued that the players had existing contracts and Chiefs must pay compensation.
Since arriving at Chiefs, Baartman and Velebayi are yet to make an official debut for the Glamour Boys in the new season. A few days ago, Kaze suggested that Baartman might need to feature for the club’s DStv Diski Challenge side to get regular playing minutes and gain experience.
The former Young Africans SC assistant coach has clarified his remarks on Baartman, revealing that the move to send the attacker to DDC shouldn’t be deemed as a downgrade.
Baartman formed part of the SA U-20 squad that participated in the FIFA World Cup in Chile, where Amajita fell short in the Round of 16.
WHAT KAZE SAID ABOUT BAARTMAN’S POSSIBILITY OF PLAYING IN THE DDC
“I heard so many comments about Baartman, people think that we are trimming out a player like Baartman,” Kaze said at Kaizer Chiefs village in Naturena on Friday.
“I want to clarify that he’s a player that was bought to be part of Kaizer Chiefs’ first team squad, he’s not a player we bought to go gain experience in our DDC, but there are different processes in what we are doing.
“Like I said before, if I count how many days Baartman has been absent from the team, it’s almost two months, with the preseason and the World Cup. We say that we will consider playing him in the DDC on weekends, then on Monday, be at training with us, and going forward, he can play in the first team.
“I don’t know, but that’s how football works. If you think a player is a little bit late on the physical condition, even on the tactical and technical condition, on weekends, he plays in the reserve team, then he comes back to the first team, he can even play three days after with the first team.
“It doesn’t mean you are downgrading him, it’s just a matter of getting game time, but you do that when you don’t have games where he could feature because this is first team and it’s very difficult to do experiments with the kind of pressure and matches that are must-win.”
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