Ibrahim Danlad leaves Asante Kotoko this week, a good eight years after joining the club. Comfortably Kotoko's longest-serving player by the time of his exit, Danlad departs a veteran in every conceivable sense of the word.

When he signed in his early teens, fresh out of high school, Danlad was a prodigy of a young goalkeeper. Long before he could even break into the Porcupine Warriors' first team, Danlad was grabbing national attention, starring for Ghana's U-17 team, with whom he nearly won the continental championship in 2017 before playing at that year's FIFA World Cup in India.

He soon rose through the ranks, becoming African champion with the U-20s just four years later, and a maiden invitation to the Black Stars would follow almost immediately—nearly a full year prior to establishing himself as starting goalkeeper for Kotoko.

While waiting for that opportunity, Danlad had enjoyed two successful loan deals at Berekum Chelsea and King Faisal, also spending time as an understudy to the likes of Felix Annan and then Razak Abalora at his parent club.

Only after the latter left for Moldova, though, did Danlad get his chance, which he certainly made the most of. That season, 2021/22, would culminate in Kotoko's first Ghana Premier League triumph since the title won in 2014.

Given how long Danlad had had to learn the ropes and bide his time before landing that spot, he would have expected to hold on to it for quite a while. And he did alright, just not for as long as he would have liked.

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Kotoko signing the highly-rated Frederick Asare at the end of that season presented Danlad with, not just an able back-up, but a worthy competitor—one who eventually displaced him under Burkinabe trainer Seydou Zerbo and remained the favourite under the next (and current) head coach, Dr. Prosper Narteh Ogum.

And it is under Ogum—who, during an earlier spell as Kotoko boss, elevated him to No.1—that Danlad has now ended his time at the club, his latest contract expiring, as just one of 11 (later updated to 18) players leaving the club after a thoroughly disappointing season. Danlad is, by far, the most experienced of the lot—as mentioned at the outset—but, ironically, he also is, aged just 21, among the youngest.

Credit to him, then, for accomplishing so much at this ‘early’ stage of his career: representing all the male national teams from the Black Starlets up (he was, notably, part of Ghana's squad at the last senior World Cup), winning two league titles, and even being named the country's Goalkeeper of the Year once.

Yet, in spite of all these feats, it appears the outgoing skipper falls just short of being described as a club legend.

There is, of course, no threshold of games one has to play to qualify as such, but even Danlad himself may agree he played far too few across his lengthy spell at Kotoko to be regarded so loftily, having been first-choice goalkeeper for not quite one full season.

Not that he was considerably at fault for that turn of events, though. Danlad, to be fair, lacked neither the talent nor the effort. He simply arrived too early to make the first half of his time at the club count, and the latter half was undermined by the fact that Kotoko had so much quality in that department that the coaches were often spoilt for choice—and while Danlad may well have been the cream of the crop, the numbers in the end just don't back it up.

But, hey, the word “legend” is thrown about so causally these days in feting far less deserving players that, should anyone choose to wrap Danlad's Kotoko legacy in it, there really wouldn't be too many dissenting voices.