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The Porcupine Warriors have failed to advance to the group stage of the competition after an aggregate loss to the Algerian team on Sunday.
Asante Kotoko’s 2020-21 African campaign has come to an end after a 0-0 draw with Algerian ES Setif at the Caf Confederation Cup on Sunday.
The Ghanaians have been eliminated from the competition with a 2-1 aggregate score that was the result of the first leg at home in Accra.
It is the second season in a row that Kotoko has been eliminated in the play-off round of the Confederation Cup, his hopes crashed for San Pedro de Cote d’Ivoire last time.
Coach Abdul Gazale kept faith in Razak Abalora over the club’s captain, Felix Annan, for the number one spot in his starting eleven, while handing over attacking responsibilities to imported Brazilian Fabio Gama Dos Santos, Kwame Opoku, Emmanuel Gyamfi and Guinean forward Naby Laye Keita.
Setif wasted no time in their quest for a goal as Abalora was forced to make a great save in just the fourth minute of the game.
In the 13th minute, Abalora was back in the limelight, scoring another save after Setif played a short corner.
After the break, Setif approached once more but the header went wide after the attacker connected to a cross.
Later, each of the two sides had opportunities to break the deadlock, but the waste of both sides kept the score unchanged at the end of the 90 minutes.
This season Kotoko began his African adventure in the Champions League, counting Mauritania’s Nouadhibou in the preliminary round.
After a 1-1 draw in the first leg, the Porcupine Warriors took a 2-0 win from Caf in the second leg as the roaming team from Nouadhibou was hit by a coronavirus outbreak upon arrival in Ghana, leading to the isolation of some players and their inability to team up the stipulated minimum number of players for the game.
A similar story awaited in the next round, but this time against Ghana’s 23-time Premier League champions.
After a 1-0 home loss to Sudanese club Al Hilal Omdurman, Kotoko saw her team depleted by the coronavirus upon arrival in Sudan, thus unable to assemble a team with the appropriate number of players for the match. .
As a result, Caf awarded Hilal a 2-0 home win, allowing them to advance to the group stage of the Champions League with a 3-0 aggregate score.
Kotoko, despite launching a protest against the authenticity of her coronavirus test results, fell to the second-tier Confederation Cup, in accordance with competition regulations.
In the 2018 and 2019 seasons, Kotoko reached her group stage of the competition.
