On this day 20 January 2019 (Exactly a year ago today) Asante Kotoko secured a place in the CAF Confederation Cup group stages for the first time since 2008 with a 2-1 win over Coton Sport in Kumasi to progress 5-3 on aggregate.
Leading 3-2 from the first leg, the Porcupine Warriors wrapped up the tie with two goals before the 60th minute.
Amos Frimpong stayed composed to put Kotoko ahead from the spot on the stroke of halftime after a foul on Burkinabe striker Songne Yacouba before Maxwell Baakoh, who was amongst the goals in Yaoundé the previous week, doubled the lead in the 53rd minute with a brilliant effort.
The former Karela United left-winger teased the Coton Sport goalkeeper to get off his line before shooting into the far corner.
The Cameroonian side, who reached the Champions League final in 2008, did not lose their spirit and grabbed a consolation goal when Oumarou Sali capitalised on poor marking inside the Kotoko penalty box to strike into the bottom corner of the left post.
Kotoko thus achieved their target of reaching the money zone for the for the first time in 11 years.
They were finalists in the maiden edition of the competition in 2004, losing the title to fierce rivals Hearts of Oak
0n this day 20 January 1987 (Exactly 33 years ago today) The UK Police crackdown on soccer hooligans in biggest operation against violence around football stadiums.
Read the full report originally published on the bbc
Police crack down on soccer hooligans
Police have carried out a series of dawn raids and made 26 arrests in their biggest operation so far against soccer hooliganism in England.
Officers say seven men have been charged.
Uniformed and plain clothes officers have been working for five months on Operation Fulltime aimed at netting the ringleaders of the gangs of hooligans which follow West Ham and Millwall.
The raids were synchronised to take place at 0600 GMT at 30 addresses in London, the Home Counties and the Midlands.
Officers armed with arrest warrants woke the sleeping football fans and told them they were being taken for questioning about soccer-related violence.
Scotland Yard said the investigation had been initiated “in the belief that violence and serious disorder were not always spontaneous”.
The undercover operation has used closed-circuit TV footage and, in some cases, surveillance film taken from a police helicopter, or “heli telly”, to identify the suspects.
Some of the violence relates to a clash on the Harwich ferry between West Ham and Manchester United fans travelling to the Netherlands to see their teams play in a pre-season friendly.
Millwall fans were identified after trouble at a game against Luton when supporters went on the rampage, ripping out seats and throwing them at home supporters and police. The trouble led to the introduction of identity cards at Luton games and a ban on away fans.
During the raids, police seized an air rifle, knives, a machete and spiked ball and chain, as well as newspaper cuttings reporting on the activities of the two teams’ hooligans.
The investigation has been welcomed by the secretary of the Football League, Graham Kelly.
He said: “It seems that some police chiefs are really getting to grips with the hooligan situation.”
In Context
Football hooliganism became an increasing problem at matches during the 1970s and 1980s.
In 1985, 39 Italian fans died in the Heysel stadium disaster. They were crushed when a wall collapsed during a stampede by Liverpool supporters. It led to a five year ban on English teams in Europe.
At home, Millwall fans in particular gained a reputation for troublemaking. The trouble at Luton was one of the worst incidents involving the club’s supporters.
After the Hillsborough stadium disaster in 1989, in which 96 people were crushed to death in overcrowded terraces, the Lord Justice Taylor report made a number of safety recommendations.
They included all-seater stadiums and new ticketing systems.
The new measures led to a gradual reduction in hooliganism.
On this day 20 January 1980 (Exactly 40 years ago today) President Jimmy Carter announced US boycott of Olympics in Moscow
President Carter proposed tthat the Moscow Olympics be moved to another country or postponed or canceled if the Soviet Union failed to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan within a month. Declaring that “it is very important for the world to realize how serious a threat the Sovietsí invasion of Afghanistan is,” the President said that if the troops were not withdrawn in a month he would ask the United States Olympic Committee to urge the
International Olympic Committee to transfer or cancel the Moscow games.
Failing that, the President said he would suggest to the U.S.O.C. that it formally withdraw American athletes from the games. Mr. Carter made his suggestion in a television interview and in a letter to Robert J. Kane, president of the U.S.O.C. Mr. Carter also endorsed the establishment of a permanent site for the quadrennial Games and mentioned Greece as an ideal location for the summer events.
Mr. Carter outlined his views on the Olympics in a letter to Mr. Kane that was released by the White House. He contended in the letter that the boycott was necessary to “make clear to the Soviet Union that it cannot trample upon an independent nation and at the same time do business as usual with the rest of the world.”
Moving the Olympics from Moscow, Mr. Carter said, would “reverberate around the globe” and could “deter future aggression.” He said that if the International Olympic Committee rejected the suggestion to move the Games, athletes from the United States should boycott the Moscow competition and stage an alternative set of games elsewhere.
Although Mr. Carter lacked the authority to order a boycott, he told reporters after the broadcast of NBCís “Meet the Press” that he believed the United States Olympic Committee would support his proposal if the Soviet troops were not withdrawn.
Lord Killanin, the president of the International Olympic Committee, termed Mr. Carter’s decision hasty and said it would be “legally and technically impossible” to move the Games from Moscow.
In Moscow, the newspaper Sovetsky Sport said that the Soviet Union would send its athletes to Lake Placid for the Winter Olympics next month no matter what the United States did about the summer Games in Moscow.
The reaction of American athletes to Mr. Carterís statement was mixed, although support seemed to be growing to stand behind any decision made by the Administration.
On April 12, after American hostages had been taken in Iran, an initially reluctant United States Olympic Committee voted to withdraw the United States team from the Moscow Games. Those Olympics, which opened in July, were not televised in the United States.
It marked the first and only time the United States boycotted the Olympics.
Although the Soviet Unionís team participated in the February 1980 Winter Games at Lake Placid, N.Y., the U.S.S.R. got a measure of revenge by boycotting the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles
By: George ‘Alan Green’ Mahamah
