Former Kaizer Chiefs coach Khalil Ben Youssef has made an admission about the co-coaching concept which he says he was not accustomed to until he had to work with Cedric Kaze.
Youssef and Kaze were handed the task of leading Amakhosi as a unit following the departure of former head coach Nasreddine Nabi earlier last season.
They guided the side to the group stage of the CAF Confederation Cup and also a highest finish in the league since 2020, third place in the Betway Premiership which also meant qualification for the Confederation Cup for a second term in a row.
However, they both parted ways with the club at the end of the campaign now both reported to be headed to different sides as respective head coaches in the South African league.
The Tunisian spoke exclusively to iDiski Times senior journalist Lorenz Köhler where the coach opened up on how decisions were made especially in tie situations.
“The idea of a co-coach, I didn’t know before,” Youssef told iDiski Times.
“For 15 years, I didn’t hear about co-coaches in my life; you never hear of this all over the world. Only the head coach and assistant coaches. Last year, I remember with AmaZulu, I saw it for the first time with coach Arthur Zwane, and I started to ask questions. Even me – it was difficult to understand, like who takes the decisions? Because it’s two coaches, if the one prefers that right-back and the other prefers the second one. Who has the final say?
“Then, when the team this season to give us the job as co-coaches. After two or three days, we had a meeting with coach Cedric… I think it was a very interesting and important meeting to clarify things moving forward. For us, things were not clear; it came from his side to say we need to meet and discuss this.
“He said, ‘Listen, we will have times where we misunderstand each other or not agree, your decision will be the first, and then we continue from that.’ It was more than clear for seven to eight months. Preparing training sessions together, preparing the game plans, during the game, the tactical changes and substitutions. It was all of us together.
“Sometimes we debated about substitutions and training sessions. But to be honest, we never had issues during the season; it was always fluent, we had similar ideas and thinking about the game plan.
“In the rare moments we had different opinions, it was my decision to continue with. But it’s not normal, maybe in South Africa, we can’t continue as co-coaches. Its head and assistant. One takes full responsibility. But it was the team who made this decision; we were under contract. Even if we worked together again, one would be assistant, not as co-coaches.”
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