Bash decries player exodus in Kotoko

15th July 2007

Correspondent:  David Kyei  Khartoum, Sudan

Kumasi Asante Kotoko F/C may boast as the Ghanaian club with the set of the most accomplished players in the local league, and yet the head coach, Bashir Hayford is not a happy person.

Speaking to Kotoko Express at the Al-Ferdous hotel after his side’s second lose to the Sudanese side Al Merriekh, at their Red Castle fortress of a stadium, Coach Bash, on whose head the responsibility of building a solid team for Kotoko described the situation that he presently finds himself as “frustrating”.

According to him, his duty has increasingly become difficult for him due to the lack of players who would want to commit themselves seriously to Kotoko for at least a year.

He says his major headache now as the coach of Kotoko is how to find a solid standing team that can be relied upon at anytime for the success of the club.

“My greatest challenge now is how to get my players to stay on to a period where they will mature for any league under the sun other than to go and warm benches elsewhere”

“The club in recent months have had to do with players who either see themselves as not the players the club can rely on, or that they are using us as a mere transit point for the advancement of their cause to other club’s outside”

Sitting the central defence position of the club, which is seriously leaky and unreliable as an example, he talked about how player exodus is giving him a hell of time to fill.

“Here is the case after taking huge sums of money from Kotoko, Isaac Vorsah, refused to report to Kumasi for training anytime he went for national assignment, and then all we hear is that he has gone to sign for an Austrian club. Isn’t it amazing how some of our players behave with us?” he enquired.

His problem in finding a replacement central defender has also hit the patch with the player he was hoping to groom for that role, Murtala Mohamed, continent trotting for a club.

“I wouldn’t be that worried if the person I later found for the role, Adamu Mohamed was also to live up to expectation. Unfortunately and surprising as well for me, the information I get from Ghana indicates that the player has not reported at the training grounds since the team was called from their recess to start the pre-season training”.

“In fact, it is disheartening and frustrating to prepare players for your plans only for them to desert you midstream thereby leaving us in a very tight corner. We need to get some of our acts right in that direction”

“I believe that it was time management heeded to my call for us to take a critical look at the kind of players we bring into the team. I can bet that some of the players just come so that they could use the Kotoko name to achieve their personal ambitions, damming what happens to the institution called Kotoko”

To curb the menace of the situation where Kotoko players desert the team half way of the season for trials that some times are unnecessary, the coach says he will waste no time when given the green light to prune down on the number of players in the team.

“We have gotten to the time when we have to take bold decisions to move the club forward, and I think the time for that is now,” he stated.

On the second match they lost to Al-Merreikh, the coach says it would have been nice winning the matches, but was also quick to add that his interest was primarily to assess the players and was happy to describe the whole exercise as a success.

“The Sudan trip has been a huge success for me, because I got a very high profile match to take a closer look at the players who have been training with us for some time now”.

“It also has exposed the younger players in the team to the fact that if they take good care of themselves like the way the Sudanese Adjlob has done and still play very good and active football at the age of forty-two, they can achieve even more than the others have been doing”

“My only wish is that more of such training tours are organised for the club for us to fine tune before the start of the season”.

The leader of the delegation, Sylvester Asare Owusu shared in the opinion of the coach by describing the trip a worth while exercise.

“As we look at ways of finding money to recruit players for the club, I think it has been a worth while exercise for us to come on this trip to fully assess the players”.

“I think a few have justified themselves, whilst others have woefully failed to impress. All these will be taken note of when it comes to deciding on who goes and who stays”