Kotoko players need to be mentally tough- Emanuel Gyimah

By David Kyei, Dakar, Senegal

11:59GMT, 15-02-2010

Players and officials of Kotoko have been asked to put up the attitude of mental toughness in their return leg to be able to make it past their opponents into the next stage of the champions’ league.

They have also been asked to have the attitude to go into matches with the aim of sealing off victory in the early minutes of the match.

“They don’t have to wait till they go a goal down before they re-organise themselves to launch an attack on their opponents”.

These pieces of advice were given by the Deputy General Secretary of the GFA and leader of Kotoko’s contingent in Senegal, Emmanuel Gyimah, during a post match interview with Kotoko Express.

According to him, victors of last Saturday’s match did not get their glory on merit as the Mauritanian referee literary tied Kotoko to the stakes for their opponents to run riot on them.

“The match was not played in the spirit of fair play and this killed out competitiveness right from the start to the end of the match”.

“I counted three different occasions when the Linguere defenders were under so much pressure that they resorted to using their hands to push the balls out of their area and yet the referee looked without an infringement being awarded or caution to the players”.

“The referee to me was a bad example for the day and he did not portray any of the qualities that FIFA expects of their match officials”.

“It was obvious that the referee was too bulky and therefore could not run around chasing the action. He hardly did any run for even thirty metres and since he has his own plans to cheat Kotoko, resorted to awarding infringements against Kotoko just to prevent us from making incursions into their opponent’s goal area”.

“It is just unfortunate that nothing can be done to reverse the score line. I hope and pray that the match commissioner, knowing who he is will write his report to CAF to report about his behaviour”.

That not withstanding, the deputy GFA scribe believes that on the performance of Kotoko itself in the game, it was an issue of some playing hard to ensure a goal whilst others took too much time to warm into the game.

“Kotoko players did not also help matters because I realised that only a few were able to get into their grove early. It therefore gave the Senegalese too much room to operate”

“I also observed that frustration got into most of the players as such they became confused and did not know what to do as any move they made was either ruled offside or their tackles attracted the whistle”.

“The issue is that as footballers, they do not have to look too much up to the referees but should have the confidence to take their chances”.

The second leg of the match comes off in a fortnight and he offered some quick fix approaches that in his estimation would be very vital for Kotoko’s qualification to the next round of the competition.

“Unlike before the first leg where Kotoko had 180 minutes to qualify to the next stage of the competition, they now have 90 minutes and so everything they would want to do should happen within the first 20 minutes of the first half”.

“This means that the players should pry for early goals to unsettle their opponents and move on to secure the match winner and even more”.

“The Kotoko players should have in mind that with their opponents victory in Senegal, they will also come to Ghana with a strategy to frustrate them. This is where they should stand to the challenge with mental toughness”.

“ASC Linguere won the first leg alright but I must say they are not an extra ordinary side that can put the breaks on Kotoko,” he opined.