Marked for Keagan Mkhize
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market7 Sep 2026
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Andile Mokotjo had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
Market7 Sep 2026
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Free State Stars, and it is not being withdrawn.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 7 arrived, 2 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Words at Free State Stars training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mandla Erasmus is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Somebody has moved past him. It is not a dropping and it is worse than one, because a dropping is about a Saturday and this is about where he stands.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Dean Khune and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Nothing is announced when this happens and everybody knows. He is a bigger part of the plan at Free State Stars than he was a month ago, and the training ground worked that out before the team sheet said so.
Market7 Sep 2026
Contract settled, hands shaken, no fee changing hands. Keagan Mkhize leaves Free State Stars the quiet way, and the wage bill breathes a little easier.
Market7 Sep 2026
The window shut and Itumeleng Billiat is still in the building
Free State Stars spent a month trying to move him and nobody rang back. He trains with a squad that has told him where he stands, and both sides start counting down to the next one.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market31 Aug 2026
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Lebogang Dala had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
Market31 Aug 2026
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Free State Stars, and it is not being withdrawn.
Match29 Aug 2026
The run now stands at 4, and the questions being asked around Free State Stars are no longer polite ones.
Match29 Aug 2026
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 4 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Mandla Erasmus and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Dean Khune is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Match29 Aug 2026
Chippa United left with the points after a 0‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
The dugout31 Aug 2026
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Keagan Mkhize ran the middle of the pitch — 6.36
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 10 combined actions and a mark of 6.36, and not one of them will make a highlights package.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad24 Aug 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 8 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Market24 Aug 2026
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Free State Stars can pretend not to have heard.
Transfer targets24 Aug 2026
$38.0K was the most the club would pay and SuperSport United were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Match22 Aug 2026
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 3 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Words at Free State Stars training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mandla Erasmus is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Match22 Aug 2026
0‑1 to Kaizer Chiefs, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Bradley Hlatshwayo and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
The dugout24 Aug 2026
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
The dugout24 Aug 2026
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Morgan Mahlangu after 0‑1, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market3 Aug 2026
The bid was some way short and Free State Stars did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Bongani Zwane and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Mandla Erasmus falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Transfer targets3 Aug 2026
A loan enquiry to Chippa United: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.
The dugout3 Aug 2026
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Free State Stars, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Squad3 Aug 2026
A strip of cloth that decides nothing on the pitch and tells the dressing room whose opinion counts. The manager has made a statement without making one.