NAIROBI, Kenya, July 1, 2026 – “Coaching Gor Mahia is one of the most difficult jobs in Kenya.”
That is according to the club’s assistant coach Kobi Bismark-Mensah who has just completed his first season as part of Charles Akonnor’s technical bench.
The Ghanaian says many of their opponents in the Football Kenya Federation (FKF) Premier League are motivated when they play the record champions, which adds the pressure on the technical bench to avoid losing to such teams.
“I think one of the difficult jobs you do in Kenya is being a head coach or coaching Gor Mahia because the demand is very high. Because it’s also Gor Mahia, you play 34 games in a season; normally it shouldn’t be like that. There are certain games that should be a bit easier without any disrespect to any club but with Gor Mahia every game is very difficult so it’s important we got to know that,” Bismark-Mensah said.
Along with Akonnor, Bismark-Mensah led K’Ogalo to the FKF Premier League title, their 22nd since their formation in 1968.
They had it all to do, having taken the reins at a club that was desperately in need of a lift after finishing the 2024/25 without silverware — a catastrophe for a side of K’Ogalo’s stature.
Winning the title was not a walk in the park for Akonnor and Bismark-Mensah who had to contend with murmurs of disapproval from the fanatics whenever the ship seemed to veer off course.
For most part, the K’Ogalo machine was a juggernaut; sweeping all and sundry in its path to the top.
However, there were times that the team came unstuck, labouring to find the results needed to attain their goals.
Reflecting on this chequered journey, Bismark-Mensah revealed that improving the players’ mental readiness proved a masterstroke in the end.
“I think that Gor Mahia players what they need is not about too much coaching, but rather how you can get them ready, especially mentally. We have big stars. Most of our players are international and what you realise is that you only look at yourself as big players. You don’t look at the opponent, what the opponent bring on board, how adequately the opponent prepared, physically, mentally, everything,” he explained.
The tactician divulged that the games in which they lost exposed their underbelly, which is poor mental preparations of the players.
Last November’s 1-0 loss to arch-rivals AFC Leopards comes to mind for Bismark-Mensah, who admits that Ingwe ran them off the park — from a mental perspective.
If you look at the AFC games…the two games. We saw how they bullied us in the first game and you saw the second game…we did what they did to us in the first game. We learnt also from anything that has happened before,” he said.
Good that it worked; more of such mental preparations will come in handy for K’Ogalo as they compete in next season’s Caf Champions League where they face stronger opponents than they are used to in the local circuit.
