Gor Mahia to face US Bitam of Gabon in ACL
Unlike last year when Gor Mahia was handed an easy preliminary round match against Anse Re-Union of Seychelles, Gor Mahia will face much tougher opposition this time around in the form of US Bitam of Gabon.
According to the draw released on Monday, GOtv Shield winners AFC Leopards’ will face Defence of Ethiopia in the Confederation Cup. The draw for the 18th edition of the Orange CAF Champions League 2014 was held on Monday, December 16, 2013 in Marrakech, Morocco.
Should Gor Mahia beat US Bitam, they will face Esperance of Tunisia in what will be a rematch of the epic enocunter between the two teams in 1987 when Gor Mahia beat Esperance in the finals of the Africa cup winners cup. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then: Esperance has since become one of the best teams in Africa even winning the champions league while Gor Mahia are only now recovering from a near death experience.
The match against Bitam will mark the first time Gor Mahia has played against Gabonese opposition. Previously, Tusker, then known as Kenya Breweries, beat Mbilinga of Gabon in the semi-finals of the 1994 Africa cup winners cup.
Union Sportive Bitam is based in Bitam called the three borders because of the proximity with Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon. Indeeed some of the teams players are from Cameroun.
The club is chaired by Magloire Ndemezo’o . The main sponsor/Patron is the former Minister of Youth, Sport and Recreation at the last African Cup in Gabon and member of the Common Bitam René Ndemezo’obiang .
The good news for Gor Mahia is that the track record of US Bitam is not that impressive. In three attempts, they have not gone beyond the first round of the Africa champions league. However their performance in the first round against Nigerian giants Enyimba was somewhat impressive. They lost only 1-2 on aggregate.
The first leg will be played between February 7th and 9th in Nairobi with the return leg to be played 2 weeks later.
Organize elections in one & half weeks that is on 25th dec to allow time for preparations. This politics will surely deal GM a sucker punch!
We need to be quick and accurate in our signing and prepararation to do best.
AR allowed gor mahia to be boxed by Afc leopards to the signature of pinchez. It is the same AR who has let mapunda and mosoti leave the club for free and lavatsa may follow. This is the same man under which gor mahia recorded a gate collection of less than 10m the whole season. Implying that gor got an average of less than 700k per home game when we all know that most of the gate collections for the season were past a million mark.
It is the same AR who sold Rama and no one has never known for how much.
AR and his team were responsible for the all that happened at the election. They registered their goons and friends as club members while at the same time doing the mugabe thing of omitting the perceived followers of their opponents from the register. Is this the man we expect to organise a free and fair election? Tuache kujidanganya
@ 3 Mcosweto put politics aside. Can you prove your claims. When a player decides to leave it becomes beyond any body’s control. Mapunda left because he wanted more play time and was given a better deal. Mcosweto, i advice you to register, come for elections and vote your candidate.
@Ochoro, I don’t do politics. Mapunda was very much willing to remain at gor until when he realised that your chairman and his buddies were not interested at giving him a new contract. Waswahili husema ‘akufukuzaye hakwambii toka.’ Why wait for a key player to run out his contract? Why buy a player and develop him then let him go for free? Biashara aina gani hiyo?
AR is the club chairman and should take responsibility for all the happenings at the club. He can’t take all of us for a ride. Accountability ni lazima.. Atuambie gate collection huenda wapi,
Mcosweto,so who is your candidate and how good is he?The problem with most of us is that we are always in a hurry to see an evil and are never in a hurry to help resolve the problems.I think the main problem with Gor is that majority of us are not affiliated to branches leading to weak branch leadership.If branches had reasonable individuals at the helm(chairmen/Chairpersons) we would have the elections conducted to a conclusion on sunday as the returning officer was willing to accomodate all those who had registered within the set deadline with or without voters card.Since each and every chairperson of the branches that were missing voters cards(mine included) were allowed to check at their registration list to confirm that the lists were genuine and tallied with the original list presented by themselves,it’s unfortunate that some Nairobi branches spearheaded by a few aspirants decided to disrupt the exercise and expect AR to take responsibility.
Mc Osweto is Rachier supposed to man the gates himself? Is he the one directly in charge of player contract issues. I agree the buck stops with him as the overall bt b more objective in ua post coz u r nt doing ua candidate any favors by being so personal. We all knw who disrupted the elections n for wht reasons. Most people in ths blog r level headed n u need more factual analysis to convince them.All in all good luck to ua candidate. U seem so convinced in his abilities
Maybe u cn share with us some of his achievements in his professional or personal life tht convinces u he is the ryt man 4 the job
4r us 2 hv a free &fair elections,we must change our constitution. I call upon AR 2 convene urgently a special meeting with stakeholders so that we change the constitution. I suggest that we change the const. so that we elect club president with his deputy only.So that when we go to vote we vote like we did the national general election . The president then should appoint a CEO with a perfomance contract.The president should be give powers to hire & fire the CEO & thats when president can be responsible
I believe there is no opponent we can say is an easy opponent.
We need to quickly put our house in order and move forward. Our match against Tusker last weekend clearly showed how unfit and unprepared we are. Tujaribu sana.
I hope the AR team has resumed office. All we hear is that we are talking to Oluoch, Okwi (now at Yanga), Situma (Ingwe), Mudde (Ingwe), Pinchez(Ingwe), Atudo, Mieno yet others are recruiting. I hear even Lavatsa’s contract has expired and no one is talking to him yet he is waiting. This is the reason we need to have a constitution where we only elect the Chair and the vice as someone has suggested. The rest can be recruited e.g the CEO , Finance, secretary gen. etc. In this case work will always go on irrespective of elections
@ 10 Dan – you are spot on.
Someone must be playing with our minds through rumours as far as recruitment is concerned but in the actual sense time is not on our side and nothing tangible seems to be happening. Too much talking, little action. In fact there should be lots of action and less talking and not vise versa
Michael Ogolo @ no. 8, you are spot on, lets move away from the society concept and embrace the corporate concept where we have a Board of directors and key staff placed on SMART performance contracts.