Former Asante Kotoko assistant coach and current Northern City boss, Abdulai Gazale, has revealed that a conflict with his former boss, Prosper Narteh Ogum, led to his departure.
Upon Ogum’s return for his second tenure, he expressed an inability to continue working with Gazale for unspecified reasons.
Gazale initially joined the Porcupine Warriors in 2019 as an assistant coach to Maxwell Konadu. However, following Konadu’s departure, Gazale was left to manage the club’s youth team.
Over the years, he occasionally assisted the first team, notably serving as the interim coach two seasons ago after the dismissal of Burkinabe coach Seydou Zerbo.
Gazale has now shed light on the training ground incident with Ogum that prompted him to step down from his position before the start of the previous season.
“Initially, Ogum never doubted my capability, but at a point, some of the players told me that any time we are in training and I correct a mistake in them, Ogum’s posture doesn’t look good.
The senior players told me this, but I told them I had not been observing that. Remember, I had worked with some of the players under Maxwell, Smith, and Barreto, and they were used to me,” Gazale told Tamale-based Sagani TV.
“It went on for a long time, and I finally noticed it. It came to a point that if Coach Ogum and the other assistants were planning a training program, they would not even allow me to see what was going on.
“From then on, I called for a meeting with Nana Yaw Amponsah, saying that I wanted to step down and didn’t want to be part of the team anymore.
Nana Yaw Amponsah declined my request. It continued, and before Ogum could tell Nana Yaw that he couldn’t work with me anymore, I had already stopped going for training.”