Former Bafana Bafana star Reneilwe Letsholonyane has explained why he left Kaizer Chiefs and why he is left with some regrets.
Letsholonyane spent eight years at Chiefs where he won nine trophies, which included two DStv Premiership titles, the last the club secured.
He departed in 2016 for SuperSport United where he added the MTN8 and Nedbank Cup honours to his CV and eventually retired from football in 2021 and took up coaching.
Having achieved so much with Amakhosi and only hanging up his boots five years later, ‘Yeye’ says it was necessary for his career but also left Naturena with regrets.
“The last season, I had a knee injury that… at times I didn’t understand, I would go to the doctors do the scan and whatnot, and they would see nothing but I’d still have pain in my knee so it took longer than expected initially,” he explained on the Bettor Podcast.
“I still played a number of games… we went to two finals, MTN8 and Telkom Knockout lost both, it was Steve Komphela’s first season at Chiefs, when the season ended.
“I didn’t think I did justice to the team, I didn’t think I did justice to the coach, justice to a black coach that was given an opportunity – to coach a big team like Chiefs.
“It was always [the narrative] that foreign coaches are the best coaches, so I felt in disappointed myself, the coach, the supporters. And with self-introspection of what went wrong besides the injuries, I was in a comfort zone and I didn’t like that.
“At the age I was – you know every season before it starts you will get some journalists getting at you asking when you’re going to retire, which age will you retire? So I was doing things on my terms, I knew I still had a few more years to go.
“But at the rate I was, I don’t think if I stayed a year or two at Chiefs, I don’t think I would’ve become a better version of myself, it was my home I was comfortable – I went to SuperSport, not to add numbers, I wanted to compete, got better, won trophies and I felt that’s where I could raise the bar, was introduced into coaching licenses etc before going into an easier environment to wind my career down [at Highlands Park].”
When pressed on whether the entire group felt that they had let Komphela down, who resigned in April 2018 after their Nedbank Cup semi-final defeat to Free State Stars, Letsholonyane said he could only speak for himself and the thoughts that haunted him.
“I felt that I let him down as a senior player [at Chiefs], a person that understands the demographics of our country, that understood how difficult it is for a black coach, to coach at that level,” he explained.
“Winning one or two of those cup finals would have bought him time – we could have bought him time to stay long, to get to do what he wanted to do, to get in line with the philosophy of the club, get the players he wanted for a longer period.”
