Audio By Carbonatix
A former staff writer for Kotoko Express is urging authorities of Kumasi Asante Kotoko to model the club on big European teams for the desired impact.
Kojo Addae Mensah says the idea of the two- time African Club Champions being run by people he describes as part-timers must be discarded.
He cited English side, Liverpool, bought in 2010 by the Fenway Group, a full time sporting company.
The club has since gone ahead to become European and World Club champions while winning their first English Premier League title in 30 years.
Speaking on Luv FM’s Kick-off last Saturday, Mr Addae Mensah said the current setting is not the best for running Kotoko in the 21st Century.
"I always go back to the Liverpool example and look at what has happened since Liverpool was given to a proper sports company to run or own, Fenway.
"Sports is their core business and they know what to do. They own franchises in the U.S, in Europe and other places. In four, five years we’ve gone to how many finals?
"We’ve been so close and now we are holding three trophies. That is the kind of structure I’m looking out for at Kotoko where the team is handed over to a company that has sports as its core business,” he emphasised.
The passionate Asante Kotoko and Liverpool follower believes such arrangements will eliminate the tendency of bringing in just any successful businessman with little or no football inclination to run the club on part -time basis.
“The company, therefore, runs the show. They appoint whoever they have to appoint and then we leave this for them for five to 10 years or whatever it is.
"Setting ground rules and objectives and completely removing ourselves from the current system where you go and call a successful businessman from somewhere whose core business is not football to come and then run Kotoko. It’s like Kotoko is being run by part-timers and we can’t be running the club by part-timing,’’ Mr Mensah lamented.
The banker says he sees nothing changing significantly by maintaining the same structure at the club even after the recent appointment of a new nine- member board, led by Dr. Kwame Kyei.
“The thing I have against this whole structure that we keep maintaining and, I believe, the way it is run should change. I have been in full support of Manhyia having the ownership stake in Kotoko. No doubt about that, because without Manhyia the club will be in tatters.
"But, this way, this time, one person is given the tweak to create his board to be Executive chair, another time, we dismantle it and a new board is appointed and they are asked to appoint their own CEO.
"The board is now bankrolling the team so the CEO feels that he is in authority and there is a clash, you know, so much wrangling; back and forth I don’t think this is the structure that we should use to run Kotoko,” he concluded.
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