Kotoko and Hearts Fail in Africa : The Ghana Football Association could not increase its points on the CAF 5-Year Ranking for the fourth year running after Asante Kotoko and Hearts of Oak failed to reach the group stage of the CAF Champions League and Confederation Cup respectively.
The 5-year ranking is a system used by CAF to determine the number of clubs each member association is eligible is enter in African club competitions.
Ghana is currently ranked at joint – position number 24 with just 2.5 points on the ranking system used by CAF for the 2022/23 CAF Champions League and CAF Confederation Cup.
Teams can start fetching ranking points only when they reach the Group Stages.
Asante Kotoko were eliminated by RC Kadiogo of Burkina Faso in the Preliminary Round of the Champions League whilst Hearts of Oak were kicked out of the Confederation Cup by Mali’s AS Real Bamako.
The Phobians were battered by AS Real by 3-0 in Bamako in the first leg. Hearts of Oak who went into the first leg match without a substantive head coach needed to stage a comeback to reach the Play-Off Round but a 1-0 home win was not enough to see them through.
Kotoko and Hearts Fail : Clubs Keep Struggling in Africa
In the 2019/20 season , Ghana was represented in Africa by Asante Kotoko and Ashantigold but none of them could make the group stages.
In the next season the Porcupine Warriors were the only Ghanaian side that played in Africa and once again they failed to play the group stages of both Champions League and Confederation Cup.
The 2021/22 season was the turn of Hearts of Oak to achieve the holy grail. After edging out CI Kamsar of Guinea in one-off match played in Accra , WAC proved too strong for the Phobians in the Play-off Round , hammering them 6-2 on aggregate to kick them out from the Champions League.
The team coached by Samuel Boadu dropped to the Confederation Cup Play-Off Round and the story was the same ; JS Saoura of Algeria advanced to the group stage at the expense of the Phobians.
Indeed the last times Ghanaian teams played at the group stage level in any African competition date back to the 2018 and 2018/19 seasons ; relating to Aduana Stars and Asante Kotoko respectively.
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