Ex-Kaizer Chiefs coach Baxter: What Wenger taught me for my future decisions

Former Kaizer Chiefs coach Stuart Baxter has revealed what ex-Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger told him regarding making job decisions.

The 68-year-old says he is yet to make his next coaching move following his Naturena departure.

His Chiefs’ second tenure ended when the club was sure they were going to end the season empty-handed for a seventh-straight season and he has since been replaced by his former assistants Arthur Zwane and Dillon Sheppard.

“As long as I have the passion to want to withstand those arrows and bullets that get fired at you if you fail on the field, then I want to do it. Because I want to do that as long as I can,” Baxter told iDiski Times.

“What I don’t want it to be is an untimely decision, Arsene [Wenger] warned me about being stubborn as he’d reflected on that many times at Arsenal.

“I said, ‘I will look at myself, I will say, is there genuinely the passion there to keep on going?’ Because if there is, I’m fit, I’m alert and there is no reason [for me to quit].

“I mean, I understand the modern game. I’m not locked into a 4-4-2 from 15, 20 years ago, and I can adapt. I’ve gone with the game and the developments that are happening in the game, I’m well addressed in that. “

SuperSport United is the only other Premier Soccer League club to be coached by Baxter and he has previously had two stints as the Bafana Bafana tactician.

Baxter is not ruling out a return to the Premier Soccer League, having first arrived in South Africa in 2004.

“I’ve had certain approaches that I’ve contemplated,” said Baxter.

“You try and think ‘well, is it better for me to get back straight into work or should I chill for a while and make sure I’m not making a bad decision?’

“But then you do that and in three or four months’ time, you don’t have an offer. So then you’re left sort of wishing that you’d taken the one a couple of months back.”

“I’m still well equipped to remain in South Africa. After my experience with Chiefs, it would have to be a project that I thought that I could get my teeth into, that I understand.”

Baxter has already been linked with a possible return to SuperSport to replace Kaitano Tembo.