South Africa defender Olwethu Makhanya has become Rangers’ eighth summer signing, joining for an undisclosed fee from Philadelphia Union.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old centre-back played for the Major League Soccer side 53 times after breaking into the first team last year.<\/p>\n
He has signed a four-year deal at Ibrox with the option of a further year.<\/p>\n
“I can’t even explain how I am feeling right now, it is honestly a big honour and a huge blessing for me to join such a big club with so much history. I can’t wait to get started,” Makhanya said.<\/p>\n
“For me, it has always been a dream to play football in Europe, ever since I was a kid, so to be here is a dream come true.”<\/p>\n
Makhanya, who started his career with Stellenbosch in his homeland, was rewarded for his impressive club form by being included in South Africa’s 2026 World Cup squad.<\/p>\n
The defender did not play at this summer’s finals, but Rangers boss Derek McInnes feels he has all the tools to thrive in Scotland.<\/p>\n
“He’s got a lot of athleticism and good potential,” McInnes said prior to his side’s Scottish Premiership opener at Dundee United on Friday.<\/p>\n
“And while he’s coming from the MLS, to a different country and a different type of football, we feel he’s got the attributes that can cope with that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Africa defender Olwethu Makhanya has become Rangers’ eighth summer signing, joining for an undisclosed fee from Philadelphia…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":836293,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-836292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=836292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/836293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=836292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=836292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=836292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}