Kotoko at it again – sacking coaches

*By Raymond Yeboah *

Employing white coaches and sacking coaches has been a usual phenomenon of this great club Kumasi Asante Kotoko and the next few months their current coach Bogdan Korak is going to be the next victim based upon what I’m hearing on the ground.

The information *SportsInGhana.com* gathers is that, the campaign to sack the coach based on the listed factors below is clear that the days of Bogdan Korak are numbered. The sacking is being championed by the chief supporter and former management member of Kotoko Ali Maradona who is using all the threats done to the previous white coaches like Maurice Cooreman, whom he once threatened with live snake.

When l heard this comment from Ali Maradona on Oman FM, in fact my mind revisited the jungle days of our football and I don’t expect a big personality like Ali Maradona to explore such hooligans’ tools to sack their coach in this modern world. Kotoko must learn from their past mistakes, inconsistency in their technical setup over the years have been the bane of Kotoko success.

Can't Kotoko learn from the big clubs in Europe like Manchester United where the consistency of Alex Ferguson is yielding results for them? Look at how Hassan Shehata out of consistency with Egyptian national team dominated the African Nations Cup.

The achievement of this coach (Korak) so far as I am concerned, on paper is the best. What was Kotoko’s position on the league log in the first round before Korak took over from Ebo Mends? He helped the team to third place finish which qualified the team for Top 4. Is playing in the cup final a crime? The coach needs praise for qualifying Kotoko to FA Cup final, the second biggest club tournament in the country after league.

If Nania beat Kotoko, it is not news because Abedi Pele and his lads had beaten the league champions before meeting Kotoko. Nania are no ordinary team, the team has cohesion as their unifying force because of consistency so Kotoko shouldn’t begrudge their effort.

If Kotoko supporters led by Ali Maradona carry this threat of sacking the coach, I won’t be surprise if one day they sack their Board Chairman if they lose because in terms of performance I don’t think the coach has failed. Kotoko, over the years have lost huge amount to white coaches, the latest being coach Abenkwan because of breach of contract of sacking them. The team must learn to keep their resources because among all the white coaches who have come to Kotoko, only Ernst Middendorp to me performed to satisfaction.

Ali Maradona was citing the coach’s indiscipline as a reason of calling for his sack and even went on to emphasize that the newly appointed assistant coach of the club, Maxwell Konadu, was shouted at by coach Korak during the FA Cup final match but I bet to differ as a writer. When Korak came to Ghana, in the second round of the league did he showed any kind of bad behaviour?

It was when the entire Kotoko team led by their playing body, management and technical team demonstrated and boycotted the President’s Cup 2nd place medal reward that brought the real character of the coach. His hidden character was revealed because Kotoko as a team demonstrated to him in the referee Mohammed Awal incident that he shouldn’t respect Ghanaian referees’ decisions and no wonder he blamed the loss of the FA Cup final match to Nania on the referees. He is a stranger in the country so Kotoko should have first instilled in him a disciplinary measure before he took over.

l would end by saying that the Ghanaian public shouldn’t be surprised if coach Bogdan Korak faces the sack at the end of this season because another reliable fact have it that some of the board members of the club are even prepared to pay the next three months salary of the coach which is 15,000 US Dollars to allow him to go but Kotoko must learn because K.K. Sarpong is driving the team to a greater height.

Thank you.