Gor Mahia hopes of making a semi-final place in the CAF Confederations Cup ended after they suffered a painful and historic 5-1
defeat in the return leg of their quarter-final tie against Moroccan side – RS Berkane.
The match was played on Sunday April 14 in Berkane Morocco.
The Kenyan champions exit the tournament 7-1 on aggregate after also losing the first-leg 2-0 in Nairobi.
Prior to the match, Gor endured one of their worst travelling arrangements that saw the first batch of players, led by Francis Kahata
spend the night at the Hamad International Airport in Doha as they waited for their
flight to Casablanca enroute to Berkane town.
K’Ogalo was not at all prepared for the game with disjointed travel plans seeing the team assemble for the match only hours to kickoff.
Pictures shared widely on social media showed several players stuck in an airport lounge in Doha less than 24 hours to the match.
The team had travelled in four batches. Two batches travelled via Doha, Qatar, with the other two connecting to Morocco through France and Dubai.
At some point it seemed that Gor would not honour the fixture and pleas to have the game dismissed were denied by CAF.
Club Chairman Ambrose Rachier who had also flown to Morocco, intimated on local media that the team could end up fielding eight players, of the first batch that had arrived in Berkane, if the rest of the squad failed to arrive on time.
Nevertheless, the final batch arrived two
hours before kick off.
The final batch of players arrived in Berkane two hours before kickoff after travelling seven hours by road from Casablanca.
It did not take long for Berkane to send an early death warrant as they took the lead barely after 21 minutes through Kodjo Laban, who beat Gor shaky defence to beat Keeper Fredrick Odhiambo.
Unperturbed by the huge crowd that cheered the home team Gor regrouped with a swift attack that saw Lawrence Juma equalize for Gor in the 24th minute to silence the packed crowd.
In the 28th minute, Berkane captain Mohammed Azizi put the home team
ahead with the second goal before Bakre El Helali’s extended his teams lead after 35 minutes which sent the hosts to the break with a sumptuous 3-1 healthy lead.
Speedy striker Issoufou Dayo, who netted in the 2-0 win in Nairobi last weekend, grabbed his second of the tie in the 57th minute with Youssef Essaiydy rounding off the route with a goal four minutes from time.
