With barely two minutes into the match, Gor Mahia’s hopes of a historic comeback in their first round of Caf Champions League encounter with USM Alger were snuffed out.
Wellington Ochieng panicked under pressure from a USM player and conceded a throw-in. Abdulrahim Omar hurled a long one into the box for Alex Mahious to flick past Peter Odhiambo via a deflection from Joash Onyango.
Suddenly Gor needed five goals to overturn the 4-1 first leg defeat a fortnight ago. It was now a herculean task which was made impossible with a quarter of an hour played when Mahious sprung the half-hearted offside trap mounted by the Kenyan champions and drilled a low shot past Odhiambo.
You could hear a pin drop despite the sizeable crowd at Kasarani. K’Ogalo fans had come in numbers to possibly witness history but it was their side whose sojourn in the 2019 Caf competition that was rendered obsolete as they ended the day 2-0 losers and with 6-1 aggregate loss.
“It’s a learning process. Every Gor player will now know the level and quality of teams in the Champions League and improve next time,” conceded Steven Polack. The Englishman rued the mistakes his side made to take the game further away from them.
“At this level, if you make any mistake, you get punished and we learnt that to our cost. But after the second goal, we improved a lot and had twelve good chances. However, it seemed like even if we played until tomorrow, we could not score,” admitted the Gor tactician.
Polack’s side were not their usual confident selves, preferring long punts forward rather than their normal ‘Tiki-Taka’ game. Nicholas Kipkirui squandered two gilt-edged chances that could have given the score-line some semblance of respect as Gor struggled to find a way past the Algerians.
Dickson Ambundo should have done better when picked out by Boniface Omondi but he side-footed wide. K’Ogalo were the better side at the start of the second half with a pair of headers by their fullbacks Wellington and Geoffrey Ochieng failing to beat the Algier keeper.
The Kenyans camped in the USM half particularly after Ernest Wendo replaced Ambundo.
Kenneth Muguna had a couple of chances to at least hit back for K’Ogalo but on both occasions, the skipper missed the target. Bizarrely, with his team looking for a way back into the tie, Polack withdrew the impressive Boniface for defender Joakim Oluoch, a sure sign that the Englishman was waving the white flag.
As is the norm with many north African sides, USM resorted to time-wasting tactics that angered the Gor faithful with some resorting to throwing seats and water bottles towards the anti-riot police who were keen to keep the peace in spite of the outcome of the duel.
In the end, Gor will look back at the opening fifteen minutes as the period on which they really got knocked out of the lucrative African club tourney, conceding two goals to kill off any chances they had of turning the two-legged tussle on its head. For USM they join the likes of former champions Al Ahly and Mamelodi Sundowns in the group stages.
