Kaizer Chiefs coach Baxter confirms Castro and Alexander are fit to face SuperSport United
Kaizer Chiefs coach Stuart Baxter has stated Leonardo Castro and Cole Alexander are fit and ready to be involved in their Premier Soccer League match on Saturday against SuperSport United.
The tactician will be leading Amakhosi against his former team, having claimed a 2-1 win in the reverse fixture played in October. It will also be the first time since March 2020 that fans will be allowed at the FNB Stadium after a green light by the government.
"We’ve got roughly the same crop of injuries that we’ve had before, a few of the long-term ones, S’fiso [Hlanti], and people like that," Baxter said as quoted by iDiski Times.
"So we don’t have anymore. We’ve got people coming back, like Leo Castro’s in very good shape at the moment, he’s been working very hard. Cole Alexander’s back, he had an extra game last week to get over his dislocated elbow.
"So apart from that, we had a couple that were ill earlier on but Bernard [Parker] did his first training today, Phatu [Nange] had his vaccination so he went two protocol days without training. So we’ve got everybody back in, they did a session today, we’ve just finished it, but everybody worked very hard.
"They seem to be in good spirits and looking forward to the game, especially looking forward to obviously playing in front of the supporters again."
Matsatsantsa recently parted ways with coach Kaitano Tembo, with assistant coach Andre Arendse being promoted on an interim basis until the end of the season.
Currently, the team is placed eighth on the table and were recently knocked out of the Nedbank Cup by National First Division side Tshakhuma Tsha Madzivhandila.
Tembo has been with SuperSport for the past 23 years, first arriving as a player, before coaching the club’s development teams. He then served as assistant coach to Gavin Hunt, Stuart Baxter and Eric Tinkler, before landing the head coach role in 2018.
As head coach, Tembo guided SuperSport to the 2019 MTN8 triumph as the only piece of silverware he managed to collect.