Kotoko in crisis: Will Ogum agree to fire Ogum?

Fact: if the head coach of Asante Kotoko was anyone but Dr. Prosper Narteh Ogum, he’d have been fired by now.

The Porcupine Warriors have emerged much worse from the break domestic football took to accommodate the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) than they entered it.

They lost just one and won seven of their nine games in all competitions before the tournament; of the nine played since, only one has been won and seven lost. The tables have, well and truly, been turned. That torrid form has had Kotoko kicked out of the FA Cup and seen them slip from near the head of the 2023/24 Ghana Premier League table to its waistline.

Thirteen points off the pace with just nine games to go, surely, any ambitions of a title challenge are now extinguished, and all the record Ghanaian champions could realistically hope to achieve at this point is a face-saving end to the campaign.

But there is no promise that things are about to get much better — not when the next game is away to a Dreams FC side flying high [in continental action], the one after that against leaders Samartex, followed by a trip to Medeama’s near-invincible home.

As implied at the outset, any coach at the helm of a team performing so badly would naturally come under intense scrutiny — so intense, in fact, that a dismissal would be, not just almost inevitable, but the only logical eventuality.

Not so, it seems, with Ogum.

He’s come under heavy criticism and backlash from Kotoko fans and the Kumasi media, yes, but there doesn’t appear any real interest even at this critical point to consider a parting of ways by those with a real say on the issue.

Even when speculation emerged a couple of weeks ago that such a decision was being pondered, the Interim Management Committee (IMC) moved swiftly to emphatically quash the rumour.

Why the hesitance to make such an obvious call, then?

Well, it’s hard to tell, though might it be — partly, at least — because Ogum himself, quite bizarrely, represents a quarter of the IMC whose job it is to take that decision?

It’s an arrangement that seemed rather befuddling and problematic at the time the committee was constituted ahead of the season, but especially more so now that the team is mired in deep trouble.

If Ogum — who had great success in his first tenure a two seasons ago, only departing as league champions and on his own terms — would be axed, he’d have to consent to such a verdict (which, presumably, would cost him his place on the IMC by extension).

And while he wouldn’t be the first coach to recommend his own sacking —the legendary Frenchman Gabriel Hanot did so, incredibly, back in the late 1940s —it would be quite the move on Ogum’s part.

Don’t hold your breath, though.