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05.04.2005 Football News

Massive Overhaul Underway In Kotoko

05.04.2005 LISTEN
By Graphic

KUMASI Asante Kotoko appear to have been so hardly hit by last Sunday's league decider defeat to Hearts of Oak. Just a day after they lost the 2004 GT premier league, club officials are preparing a massive exercise that could see the axing of a number of players for indiscipline and pave way for a sort of rebuilding programme in the club.

A source in the club who briefed the Graphic Sports of the exercise would not mention names but hinted that some key old players are likely to fall victims of the exercise when it gets underway probably tomorrow.

The source said a hurriedly arranged crisis meeting between the board and management of the club took place just after the Hearts match last Sunday where it came up that indiscipline among the players was quietly killing the club.

The source said some old players whose contracts were about to end would not have the contracts renewed. This is because they have been found out to be leading a crusade to inject indiscipline into the club.

Perhaps what board member Wilberforce Mfum said on a Kumasi-based radio station yesterday morning gave signals of what was in store for the playing body. He told the radio station that many Kotoko players were not playing for the love of the club but for money.

Mfum bemoaned glorious chances squandered on the afternoon and said it showed that the Kotoko players were not committed.

The board member said nobody could blame the management or the coach for the defeat, emphasising that the players must take all the blame.

Within the supporters' body in Kumasi, opinions were divided over who should get the sack.

While some said the Major Larson administration should go, others think the Otumfuo who owns the club should give the board chairman and some of his members the sack for non-performance.

The supporters could not fathom how Kotoko should lose to Hearts twice within a very short period of about three months, and said something was basically wrong with the club.

From radio station to station, the supporters chastised the top hierarchy of the club for not doing much to move the club forward ,especially when they sold key players including Charles Taylor, Stephen Oduro, and Frank Osei without looking for effective replacements.

They feared that if nothing is done positive to the club Kotoko faced the danger of sinking deep into the abyss of football.

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