Kjetil Zachriassen instructing his players during a training session
Asante Kotoko head coach Kjetil Zachariassen has described his side’s friendly with Ivorian side, Societe Omnisports De l’ Arme, as very useful.
The midweek friendly exercise offered Kotoko an opportunity to put their house in order ahead of their CAF Champions League game against Nigeria’s Kano Pillars next weekend.
And although both sides failed to hit the back of each other’s net, the Norwegian believes the Baba Yara exercise proved beneficial and that his charges are getting there; tactics wise ahead of the continental campaign.
He said in a post match interview, “We are as ready as we can be at this stage. You can see that we have been training and today was another chance to play a match after the training. We tried to implement our systems and structures.
I think today we were a little more off than on. There was so much distance between the players but that is adjustable. So, competitive wise the players are there.”
And explaining his tactics, he stated, “A lot of people will say that we played this game without a shot on target but that is not true. The thing is that we controlled the game but we did that in areas that were not needed.
“We had the ball a lot of the ball in deep positions instead of playing it forward and the players could not tell me why they were doing that. We will have to work on those things,” Kjetil Zachariassen indicated.
The Porcupine Warriors will cross swords with their Nigerian counterparts, Kano Pillars, on August 9-11, with the second leg fixed for August 23-25.
By Kofi Owusu Aduonum