Asante Kotoko’s head coach, Kjetil Zachariassen has named a 23-man squad ahead of their CAF Champions League opener against Nigerian football giant, Kano Pillars, this weekend.
Kotoko will slug it out against Pillars in the preliminary round of the competition on Sunday, but footballlive.ng have gathered that the Ghanaian side will be without several key players.
Maxwell Baakoh, Abdul Ganiyu and Richard Senanu failed to make the squad due to injuries.
Also, Abdul Fatawu Safiu and Songne Yacouba were also not included in the list for the first leg tie.
According to reports in Ghana, Zachariassen will prune his squad to 18 players after their final preparations in Accra.
The team is scheduled to arrive Nigeria on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Pillars have expressed confidence they will go past Kotoko in a CAF Champions League qualifier this weekend, in Kano.
The Kano club has rounded up a training stint in Kaduna ahead of Saturday’s clash against the experienced Ghanaian campaigners with coach Ibrahim A. Musa, saying they are ready for the challenge ahead of them.
“We are in a very good shape, the same way we won the Aiteo Cup and came second in the NPFL, by God’s grace we will do our best on the continent,” he told SCORENigeria
“After we won the cup we stayed back to camp in Kaduna. This was to keep the players concentrated so that they remain in good shape to face Asante Kotoko on Saturday.”