In the build-up to the 2016-17 PSL season, Mazola Molefe interviews the four coaches he believes have the chance to lead their teams to the Premiership title. Here he features double-league champion Stuart Baxter of SuperSport United:
Stuart Baxter says he often has to be an inventor to be successful and his first full season as SuperSport United coach is no different.
After spending three years at Kaizer Chiefs, a tenure that produced an unprecedented two PSL titles, the Scotsman has to be a designer of some sort in trying to find yet another winning formula for a side that has been floating about since clinching three successive championships between 2008 and 2010. “I have had to re-invent myself throughout my career,” says Baxter.
“You go with a different group and what that group needs is something different from their coach. I had a squad in Stockholm who were really strong, hard Swedes. They all had an opinion and I had to be tough with them, be on their case the whole time and they could take it.
“There were no grey areas and they enjoyed that and we won the league and were able to play in the Champions League.
“Then I went to another team which had eight African players. If I had gone in and been the same, I would have killed them. What they needed was something different.
“You always have to re-invent yourself, even tactically.”
Baxter has rubbed shoulders with the best in the business – Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger and former Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson among them. Just from those two examples he knows that doing things the same way doesn’t always work.
SuperSport appointed Baxter for a reason after his predecessor Gordon Igesund was shown the door in January for failing to get the best out of a squad many had tipped as one of the title favourites.
They finished eighth last season, but did manage to win the Nedbank Cup on the final day of the campaign.
“You are always going to find that the same things still help you win games, like scoring more goals than the opposition and knowing how to close down opponents,” Baxter explains.
“But you don’t want to be predictable. If you are a creative coach, you always have to try to find something that will give you a bit of a tactical edge, and that’s what I am trying to do. You can’t just have one idea.”
He now has to juggle his target, which he says is to be within touching distance of the usual suspects as far as the title chase is concerned in Chiefs, Orlando Pirates, defending champions Mamelodi Sundowns and maybe even Bidvest Wits, along with playing continental football.
Baxter remembers he came under heavy criticism in 2014 while with Amakhosi for giving the impression that he viewed the CAF Confederation Cup as a distraction.
SuperSport return to that stage early next year by virtue of being crowned Nedbank Cup champions.
“I never really understood the criticism, maybe the only thing was that Chiefs had pulled out once and there was talk about protesting about this and that. Then people thought they are reluctant to go play,” says Baxter.
“It was never that. If you are under pressure the way we were, then you have to ask whether we were equipped at that time to have a go at it.
"It cost us the league and the same could be said about the second year. The difference is that we were ahead by a big margin and other teams just couldn’t catch up.
“It’s not impossible to challenge on both fronts, but at that time at Chiefs we felt we wanted to establish ourselves domestically and having a full-blown attack on Africa perhaps came a little bit early for us.”
The Confederation Cup is a headache for much later in the season. So the focus is on improving from a poor season by SuperSport’s standards and Baxter says having had a pre-season with his men has been immense in preparing for a tricky opening fixture against Platinum Stars, who ended the previous season five places above them on the log table.
“It was important and a bit frustrating as well,” the coach says about the build-up to their first game, which will be played away from home at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium.
“It’s been a little bit stop-start because there are players coming in and some will go as well before the end of the transfer window. And it’s not just us, but it was important to get the basics set in stone.”
As his parting shot to conclude the interview, Baxter again chats about re-inventing his own approach. “I was in the US attending a lecture with the Seattle Seahawks, the football team and the coach asked the players how things went last season and their reply was, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. He turned around and said ‘no, if it ain’t broke, break it’.
“He said he wants to break it again and if he finds one area worth changing, he will change it. So that is my thinking because that is a healthy process of doing things.”
– @superjourno