25 years after leaving, Kwasi Appiah meets Kotoko for the first time

The former Asante Kotoko defender represented the club for a decade between 1983 and 1993 before leaving Ghana’s most successful football club.

But after twenty-five years of separation Kwesi Appiah will oppose his former club for the first time on Friday as head coach of the Black Stars of Ghana.

Not much is actually at stake in this game but it is going to be a day of memory recollection for the Black Stars gaffer.

Since leaving Kotoko, Appiah took a keen interest in coaching and has served as an apprentice under bosses like Claude Le Roy, Milovan Rajevac and Goran Stevanovic before finally becoming the main technical boss of the national men’s team after 2012 AFCON.

He has also received training at bigger football institutions like Manchester City and Liverpool and is certificated with a CAF license A.

James Kwesi Appiah coached the Ghana U-23 men’s team to Gold success at the 2011 All-Africa games in Maputo and remains his biggest achievement as a coach till date despite becoming the first Ghanaian coach to qualify Ghana to the 2014 World Cup where his team failed to reach the second round.

Appiah was however fired from his job as Ghana coach in September 2014 but he was not short of employment opportunities as Sudanese side Al-Khartoum offered him their managerial role where spent some two years and eight months.

It was again the former Ghana defender affectionately called “Mayele” that will be hired by the GFA to succeed Avram Grant in April 2017 and here he is as the current Ghana coach ready to take on his former club in a what will be a remarkable friendly game on Friday.