Gor Mahia urged to take positives from huge loss

[PHOTO: COURTESY]

Gor Mahia didn’t look like a team that had just been hammered 4-0 by Everton in the SportPesa Trophy match at Goodison Park on a chilly Tuesday night when they walked into their hotel in Liverpool.

Both the coaches and the players acclaimed their achievements and lessons learnt from the historic match rather than dwelling on the mistakes.

K’Ogalo chased shadows for a better part of the night with poor goalkeeping and defending easily gifting the Toffees’ their second trophy in a row.

Ademola Lookman and Kieran Dowell strikes gave Marco Silva’s men a two-goal cushion to the break before substitutes Nathan Broadhead and Oumar Niasse wrapped up victory late in the game in a span of three minutes.

However, despite the defeat, Gor Mahia coach Dylan Kerr, who gave all his 24 players some minutes, told his charges to hold their heads high and take positives from the once-in-a-lifetime fixture.

“Three of the goals we gifted them, especially the last two. We did some comical mistakes, but I think that’s a learning curve. Maybe I got it wrong to some people by not playing our best eleven for the whole game. But it wasn’t about that, we were here to represent Kenya, to show everybody that we have talent and depth in our squad,” said Kerr.

“We are all disappointed, but the good thing is that I gave everyone a chance to play. We got a lot of positives out of it; it’s a great experience to everybody and they have represented the country with pride.

“The whole experience was something that we can learn from and take to the next stage. 4-0 wasn’t a true reflection of the game; at 2-0 we should have scored, but Mustafa (Francis) missed an open goal.

But the Briton was quick to take a jab at a section of his players for disobeying him.

“Some players looked embarrassing today, every time they got the ball they fell over. In a country like England, you must have the right equipment as a player. I had told them to have the right footwear because I knew it would be slippery.”

Captain Harun Shakava said: “Of course, it was not all about results. We created a few chances, but we failed to convert them. All the same we’ve gained a lot in terms of training as well as experience. We need to take football as a serious profession.”