Asante Kotoko Head Coach, Kjetil Zachariassen, has admitted that his team lacked the requisite know-how to handle their second leg of the CAF Champions League qualifier against Etoile du Sahel on Sunday.
Kotoko held a 2-0 lead from the first leg and they needed to avoid losing heavily to stay in the competition.
However, they could not handle the task and lost 3-0 on the night leading to their exit from the CAF Champions League and entry into the CAF Confederation Cup playoff stage.
After the match, Zachariassen told reporters that the team did not have what was needed in such a situation and they paid dearly for that.
“We did not stick to the plan today and we were strange on the pitch. We did a lot of things that we would not do and we chose a bad day to do those things.
They showed that they had more experienced and they used that knowledge. We showed that we did not have too much experience for this level.
We have to learn from this and use the lessons in the CAF Confederation Cup.”
Before the start of the competition, Zachariassen was given a task of getting to the group stage of the competition but he conceded that his team was currently not fully built to face the tests in the competition.
We need to learn a lot of things from the experience. We were not good mentally and we have to improve on that. This is our level at the moment.
We are in the Confederation Cup and I think that is the right level for us. We have to be realistic. I have told the fans to be realistic because we have only worked together for three months and other teams have been working for years.”
Kotoko will now wait for CAF to conduct the draw for the Confederation Cup playoff to see if they can get into the group stage of the competition.
They will face any of the teams that have made it from the previous round of the Confederation Cup. –Citisports
