Johannesburg - Struggling Soweto giants Kaizer Chiefs named former Bafana Bafana coach Stuart Baxter as the club's new head coach on Monday.

GALLERY: Past weekend's sporting pictures

"It's a great pleasure to announce Stuart Baxter as the new Kaizer Chiefs coach," Chiefs chairman Kaizer Motaung said in a statement on the club's website.

"He will fit in well into our strategy going forward because of his great wealth of knowledge at the club, national team and at an international level.

"His expertise as far as mentoring coaches as a coaching instructor will assist us in developing our own coaches and will also help a great deal in developing our youth academy."

Baxter, who coached Bafana Bafana in 2004 and 2005, replaces Serb Vladimir Vermezovic who was sacked last month after a string of poor results.

The Amakhosi are sixth in the league standings and are out of the title race with two games left in the season.

"I'm very happy to be taking up this challenging but exciting project at Kaizer Chiefs," Baxter said in the statement.

His coaching career has extensively been in the Scandinavian countries, while also managing clubs in Portugal and Japan.

At national level, Baxter coached the England Under-19 side, Bafana and the Finnish national team.

The 58-year-old left the latter post two years ago, and has not coached any side since.