Gor Mahia set SoNy friendly, rule out Azam
Kogalo will visit Awendo green stadium on Saturday Jan 26 to play against Tusker premier league side SoNy. This marks the first match Gor Mahia will play this season. It will offer fans an opportunity to watch Paul Kiongera, Innocent Mutiso, Israel Emuge, Rodriguez and other new signings donning the Gor Mahia jersey for the first time ever.
Earlier on, Tanzanian giants Azam had requested a friendly match against Gor Mahia. However coach Loagarusic ruled out the friendly. He told the clubs site ; “We just started our rigorous training last Monday and we cannot have the boys play a friendly match this weekend, Azam has been playing and we have been on holiday. We are concentrating on our 14 day training plan working on the players’ endurance and that only means they are not ready.
This is a level of professionalism that was completely missing in the pre-Logarusic era. Who can forget how injury plagued Gor Mahia were at the beginning of last season ? It happened largely due to the numerous friendly matches that Gor Mahia played. During last year’s tour of Nyanza, Gor Mahia sometimes played two matches in two separate towns simultaneously, sending a team to each venue. Also it is likely that any local coach would have been over-ruled by the club EC who would have insisted on playing Azam.
The match against SoNy will also offer the club’s fan base at the Lakeside an opportunity to watch the team since this time there was no Nyanza tour.
The date is supposed to be Sat 26th Jan 2013 and not Saturday Jan 16 as the Admin has put it. This will give the technical bench an opportunity to assess our new signings.
However, don’t be deceived by results in friendlies. Last year but one we beat Ghana national team at Nyayo stadium, drew 2-2 with Brazil under 20, and we never lost any friendly match including against Yanga and Simba, but when the season started, we lost to Rangers 3-0 and had a series of loses before catching up. It therefore calls for us being focused this time round throughout the season. Same thing happened last year where we did not lose any pre-season friendly match but had several loses before starting to win after we started with a win away at Thika United…
In brief, last year we won first match against Thika United and went for along duration without collecting the 3 points and I do hope this year will be different.