Kaizer Chiefs head coach Arthur Zwane believes he will remain in the Amakhosi dugout for next season and insisted 2022/23 has been a huge “learning season” for him.
The Glamour Boys dropped to fifth place on the final day of the DStv Premiership campaign after losing 1-0 at home to Cape Town City.
It was Chiefs’ 12th defeat of the campaign, extending their new negative record in the Premier Soccer League era.
In addition, it was another season without silverware and qualification for CAF football, leading to angry fans hurling objects in direction of the coach in their penultimate game.
However, Zwane has insisted he has created a thick skin and will learn from his mistakes on the first campaign as head coach.
“I’m a believer, I’m a hard worker. If there is something that football taught me – never be in the game, if you don’t have a big heart,” he responded when asked he thinks he’ll still be in charge of the club in 2023/24.
“You have to develop a thick skin. I’m not the first one that has been in this situation. I’ve seen coaches struggling in the first season, then they come up different the following season.
“It was more like a learning season for me, for the fact that me now being the head [coach], making decisions obviously with the help of other technical team members.
“But I’ve always been this supporting member of the team, supporting other coaches that have been here before.
“This time around I had to do things the way I think to help the team. As much as it was a learning season, it was a very productive one in terms of learning things that I know maybe we should’ve done this, we should’ve done that.
“When you do introspection, you always know, this is what we should’ve done here, this is what we can do going forward in terms of players that should come in.
“Now you learn, this one has got the talent, but maybe he doesn’t have the character [for Chiefs], so now we’ll look for the character more than the talent – I’m just making an example.
“Because for Kaizer Chiefs you need players that can dig deeper. Because at other teams they double and triple their efforts when they play against Kaizer Chiefs – the very same players that we sometimes want to bring in, they do well against and then they come to Kaizer Chiefs and they’re different players, because as I said they can’t cope with the pressure and demands of playing for Kaizer Chiefs caliber.”