Ben Youssef Khalil reveals shock at being introduced to co-coaching model at Kaizer Chiefs

Ben Youssef Khalil disclosed what was his football ‘culture shock’ when he worked as a co-coach at Kaizer Chiefs.

Khalil said in more than a decade in his football coaching career, he has never been exposed to the sharing of the bench.

When Chiefs let go of Nasredine Nabi as the coach, they opted for Khalil and Cedric Kaze as co-coaches as they arrived as Nabi's assistants.

"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."

Despite his misgivings about it, Khalil disclosed that he never had challenges working with Kaze at Amakhosi.

And it culminated in them guiding the team to a historic third place finish in the Betway Premiership.

“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,” he said.