Kaizer Chiefs coach Cedric Kaze has dismissed suggestions that new signing Luke Baartman has been relegated to the club’s DStv Diski Challenge squad.
Baartman, 19, is yet to make his Amakhosi debut alongside Asanele Velebayi since being snapped up in the offseason from Cape Town Spurs.
Kaze has now cleared up the air on the confusion, saying the player still remains a first team player and has not been demoted to the reserve side.
“People think we are trimming back a player like Baartman. I want just to clarify that it’s a player that was bought to be part of Kaizer Chiefs first team squad,” he told the media.
“It’s not a player that was bought to go to gain experience in our DDC, but there are a different process in what we are doing. Baartman, if I count how many days, he has been absent from the team it’s like almost two months with the pre-season, with the World Cup and when we said we will consider playing him DDC on weekend, then Monday be at training, training with first team and going forward to play as well in the first team.
“I don’t know but it’s how football works. If a player is a little bit late on the physical condition even on the tactical and technical conditions in every team in the world, the weekend he plays with the reserve then he comes back to the first team then he can play three days after with the first team, but it doesn’t mean that you are downgraded him to the DDC team.
“It’s just a matter of 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 experiment with the kind of pressure and kind of must-results that you have to get.
“I repeat again, he’s a player that was bought and that was brought to play for the first team, and he will be with the first team.”
“If in my team I had a player like Themba Zwane, if there was no age related, would I put him to play DDC? No! Why? Because he’s a player that has seen it all.
“But Baartman is still in the process of development. He’s an Under 20 player which means that his development is not complete at all.”
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