Chief Executive Office of Asante Kotoko Nana Yaw Amponsah has quashed notions that his administration are on a “clear out” mission to sack some players from the club, saying the vision is to prune the squad and form a solid team that is capable of winning satisfactorily.
Amponsah, who took over the CEO position of Asante Kotoko on August 7 this year, inherited a squad of 38 first team players which he deems too much a number for the club to manage properly, and admitted they will have to release most of them. Speaking at the ceremony during the outdoor of the new management of the club, the former Phar Rangers President took time to explain what his vision for the playing body is while outlining how the team will look like going into the 2020/2021 football season.
“For the playing body, the truth of the matter is that, when I came in Asante Kotoko had 38 players on our books, we cannot continue in that direction”, Nana Yaw Amponsah began. “We are going to have a maximum of 30 players; our first target is 28 players.
We are going by a model of 4-8-8-4; what that means is we are going to have 4 goalkeepers, 8 defenders, 8 midfielders and 4 strikers”, he explained.
In addition, the club will have a maximum of 4 youth players who are exceptional in talent and performance, who will serve as backups for the first team.
“Then we are going to have 4 youth players, because there is a lacuna or a restriction within the Ghana football regulatory regime which does not allow youth players of a team to also feature for the senior side. If you go to other jurisdictions, a player can play for the Youth side and still feature for the senior side, even senior players when they are recovering from injury they go the Youth side but we don’t have that situation in Ghana currently so we are going to have 4 youth players making 28.”
According Amponsah, his administration has decided to trim the squad to a sizeable number with the objective of making it easy to have coaches pay good attention to individual players at training, and also to be able to pay them the right salaries.
“The reason for us to have a smaller squad is to help us to cater for them well; paying the right salaries, to give the coaches opportunity to have effective training systems” he stressed.
He however admitted that the club is working around the clock to release some players but this is not motivated by any prejudicial motive but for the good of the club.
“Of course there are players that will leave and we’ll still be monitoring them if they perform well we’ll bring them back, it’s done in many many places Pogba left Man United to Juventus, he went and he came back. So for us I don’t want you to feel that we’ve come in and we are just trying to get players out. It is important that we have a solid team, Kotoko should have the best team in Ghana and that is what we intend to help the technical team to do”, he emphasised.
