Will Stuart Baxter be the messiah with Kaizer Chiefs second coming?
JOHANNESBURG - A common rule of thumb in football, for players and managers alike, is that you never go back for a second spell at a football club or national team that you previously enjoyed success with. The game is littered with examples of coaches and managers who ruined their reputations by returning to teams that they previously led to various degrees of success, only for things to go awry in the second spell, all but ruining the romanticism of the first. Earlier this week, former Bafana Bafana mentor Stuart Baxter threw caution to the wind and officially sealed a two-year deal to rejoin a struggling Kaizer Chiefs side that last tasted silverware during Baxters first, three-season long spell in charge of the club from 2012 to 2015. On his first arrival at Naturena in June 2012, Baxter found an Amakhosi outfit firmly in the shadow of their Soweto arch-rivals Orlando Pirates who had won back to back domestic trebles in the 2010/2011 and 2011/2012 seasons. Chiefs were in need of reinvigoration but in his first game Baxters charges were dumped out of the MTN 8 competition 4-1 by Mamelodi Sundowns, as panic set in amongst the Amakhosi faithful. ALSO READ: Baxter gets the backing: Stuart is the right man for Kaizer Chiefs, says Molefi Ntseki However, Chiefs soon found their rhythm in the 2012/2013 league campaign and were devastating in their transition-based game en route to a first league crown since 2004/2005. They completed a double by bagging the Nedbank Cup in style at the end of that 2012/2013 campaign. By the time he left the club at the end of his third season, an MTN 8 crown had been added in the early part of 2014/2015 season and the title triumph at the end of the campaign ensured another domestic double for the much travelled sexagenarian. ALSO READ: Why Stuart Baxter is not the right man to coach Kaizer Chiefs Baxter now returns to a much changed South African football landscape, with Chiefs barely making it into the top eight following a disastrous eight-month spell under Gavin Hunt, while Mamelodi Sundowns continue to entrench their status as the dominant force in the local game. Similar to his first spell at Naturena, Baxter returns to a club whose fan base is starved of silverware. ALSO READ: Stuart Baxter wants Kaizer Chiefs to rediscover their identity He will need to look no further than recently departed Real Madrid manager Zinedine Zidane to see the pitfalls of engaging in a second spell following a successful one. With a team led by the unstoppable Cristiano Ronaldo, Zidanes Los Blancos won three Uefa Champions League crowns on the spin, a La Liga crown, two Uefa Super Cups and two Fifa Club World Cups from 2016 to 2018 before a surprising exit in May 2018. ALSO READ: Kaizer Chiefs-linked Stuart Baxter, agent to discuss next step on South African soil He returned to Madrids hallowed Santiago Bernabeu Stadium in March 2019 and won a Spanish Super Cup and La Liga double in the 2019/2020 season. But it is the Champions League where Los Blancos managers are judged. Zizou, without Ronaldos goals, struggled in Europes premier club competition and jumped ship following a barren 2020/2021 season. Perhaps a more horrifying example is that of Luiz Felipe Scolari, Brazils 2002 World Cup winning manager. With Brazil playing host to the 2014 World Cup, Big Phil made the fateful decision to return to coaching his homelands national team 10 years after leading them to a fifth World Cup crown in Asia.