Olwethu Makhanya Prepares for Old Firm Derby with Family Support

Olwethu Makhanya will walk into his first Old Firm derby on Sunday knowing he’s already come through something tougher than a hostile Celtic end or a snarling League Cup quarter-final.

He’s already had to convince himself that football was worth the fight.

The Rangers defender, who has slotted impressively into Derek McInnes’ back line since arriving from Philadelphia Union in the summer, admits he came close to walking away from the game as a teenager. The turning point came not on a pitch, but on a phone call.

“I think my parents, especially my mum, played a really big role in me becoming a professional footballer,” the South Africa international said.

At 16, Makhanya left home for Johannesburg chasing a contract and a dream. It didn’t go smoothly. The games weren’t coming, the doubts were. One day, he picked up the phone and told his mother he’d had enough.

“I went away from home for the first time, tried, but things were not going well. I called my mum this one day. I told her ‘I just want to come back, maybe focus on education because maybe football is not for me.’”

The response still drives him.

“The thing that she told me over the phone was that ‘you left here telling me that you're going to go play football, so I want you to do that.’ I just had to keep on going until things came true for me.”

That push kept him in Johannesburg long enough to find his way to Stellenbosch, the club where his professional journey truly began. Now, at 22, he is anchoring a Rangers defence that has quietly built momentum at a crucial point in the season.

McInnes’ side head into Sunday’s League Cup quarter-final against Celtic on the back of a four-game league winning run, conceding just once in that spell. Makhanya has been central to that resilience, and the late midweek victory over St Mirren only hardened his belief in the squad’s mentality.

“I think it does highlight the fact that maybe the group is strong mentally,” he said of that comeback. “That shows a lot of mentality and character from the boys.

“It's going to be very important to stay together. I think it shows a lot of togetherness and it's something that we've been working on off the field.”

The numbers back him up. One goal conceded in four league matches tells its own story: this is a Rangers team that has started to relish the ugly work, the late blocks, the concentration in the final minutes. The kind of details that decide derbies.

And now comes the real examination.

Makhanya has never played in anything like an Old Firm before. Few fixtures in world football match the noise, the pressure, the emotional weight of Rangers v Celtic. He knows it. The dressing room has made sure he knows it.

“I think everyone understands what this fixture means to the club, to the fans and everyone,” he said. “I'm really excited and looking forward to it.

“I just know that it's going to be a very passionate game. I'm honestly expecting a really, really crazy game from the fans.”

For a player who once questioned if football was for him, this is the other extreme: a city split in two, a cup tie on the line, and a support demanding everything.

Makhanya isn’t shying away.

“We just have to try and do our job and deliver because we know the fans are going to be behind us. We're going to use them as an encouragement and also understand that we're also doing it for them. They're going to be very helpful for us.”

From that phone call with his mother to a first taste of the Old Firm cauldron, the path has been anything but simple. On Sunday, under the floodlights and the fury, we find out just how far that parental push has taken him – and how much further this Rangers defence can go.