Yeye’s Advice To Current Players

Former Kaizer Chiefs general Reneilwe Letsholonyane has urged current footballers to do the talking on the field so they can have a sustainable future, even after they have hung up their boots.

Being at his best all the time in the deep and in advanced areas during his playing days has kept Letsholonyane still attractive for brands to rope him in CSI work in the communities.

What Letsholonyane did on the field at the highest is still paying off, and that was due to his consistency throughout his career, with Mamelodi Sundowns assistant coach Manqoba Mngqithi once describing him as the best forward-thinking player in the country, who hardly played a back pass.

The former Chiefs star has recently been appointed as AmaZulu’s DStv Diski Challenge coach this coming season after he retired two years ago. TS Galax was the final club he played for.

Letsholonyane is one of those ex-players in Durban who is thought of first by brands, and bread manufacturer SASKO roped him in to be part of the speakers in the Siyasizana campaign to share his growth in its CSI initiative in uMlazi in Durban this past Friday.

“It is very important while you are still playing to give your best,” said Letsholonyane, who started with “shew” and followed by a long breather when replying to iDiski Times.

“I think we, because I’m still in that space because I played football, take things likely. We think we will play football forever and we know definitely we will not play forever.

“But in our heads, for some reasons, we think we will play forever and we are not taking ourselves seriously but we expect to be taken seriously, that is another thing.”

Letsholonyane said the social media platforms can be used differently because they are for free and people are consistently hungry for content, something to talk about since they are in control of those platforms.

“There is an Instagram, there is Twitter (now known as X), whatever, those platforms helped you as an individual to be associated with big brands,” said Yeye.

“But it does not start with Instagram or Twitter, it starts with what you do on the field. The most important thing is to play on the field, do your job properly.

“Once you do anything on the field, people see, people are not stupid, people see what you are passionate about doing even on bad days, people will see that you are good at what you are doing.

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“Once you are always doing what you need to do first on the field, then other things – your Instagram will help you to support what you are already doing.

“When you post, you already post what you have been doing anyway. The numbers also will be supported by what you do on the field. You won’t be followed by just R1 million people when you are not performing on the field.

“You perform on your job, which is football in this case, and then you will get followers. Once you get followers, you will get brands that want to be associated with you.

 “So I’m saying to current players, our footballers should really, really take care of themselves [on the field], take care of what brings them money, that’s football and that’s all we know most of us.”

You can read all of what Yeye had to say in Edition 120 of the iDiski Times newspaper available on the iDiski Times website.