Asante Kotoko’s Director of Football, Stanley Menzo, has offered his fullest account yet of the thinking behind the club’s appointment of Eric Tinkler as head coach, revealing that a professional relationship dating back to his own coaching days in South Africa gave him early conviction that Tinkler was suited to the demands of Asante kotoko
Menzo, the former Ajax and Netherlands goalkeeper who was unveiled as Kotoko’s Director of Football on June 8, 2026, said it took him only a fortnight in his new role to identify the qualities the club’s next head coach would need and to recognise that Tinkler already possessed them.
When I came here the first two weeks, I saw the environment, I saw how things were here, so I could skip directly a few coaches because they are not used to work in such environments,” Menzo said. “And I knew Eric from my time in Cape Town when I was coach of Ajax Cape Town, and I knew he was coach of Cape Town City. I knew they were struggling with a lot of things. It was a newly born club, and as a coach he was struggling with a lot of things that he managed to do.”
Menzo said what stood out from that period was Tinkler’s ability to produce results and develop a functioning team despite limited resources, a scenario he believes mirrors the challenges currently facing Kotoko.
He didn’t have training facilities, but he managed to create a team, he managed to perform. And he knows Africa because he’s traveled with his clubs through Africa.”
For Menzo, that combination of experience and a track record of building teams from difficult starting points made Tinkler the standout candidate.
He’s been there, he’s been here where we are now, and he’s built clubs with youth development. He has built those clubs to a good standard, a good level. So, for me, it was clear that he was the man for this job,” he said.
A New Recruitment Standard
Beyond the coaching appointment, Menzo used the opportunity to lay out the recruitment philosophy he intends to enforce across the playing squad one in which technical quality will no longer be sufficient on its own.
Quality is not enough. You need a good mindset, you need to be a professional.” Stanley Menzo Director of Football
Menzo said any player who cannot meet that standard, regardless of ability, should expect to be moved on.
If you can’t be that because ‘I don’t know what,’ then we have to say, ‘Sorry, this is not what we want in the club. This is not what the club stands for,’ and then you have to shake hands and say, ‘Okay, maybe it’s better to go somewhere else,'” he explained.
He was careful to stress that such decisions are not personal, but rooted in the club’s broader institutional interest.
It’s hard, but it’s never individuals, it’s never private, it’s never out of emotions. It’s decisions we make out of profession. It’s not about me, it’s not about the coach, it’s about the club,” Menzo said.
He outlined two central pillars of the recruitment overhaul: raising the overall standard of incoming players, and ensuring every new signing shares the club’s collective mentality.
The recruitment must be better than we have. That’s one. And two, it must be having the same mentality, the same mindset that we want and that we have. We don’t want to bring in players that are thinking only on their own. You’re part of this family, you’re part of this group, and you have to behave like that and act like that to be a professional, to work together,” he said.
Rethinking Bonus Culture
Menzo also took aim at individual-incentive structures common at some clubs, arguing that they undermine team cohesion. He cited the example of strikers receiving personal bonuses tied to individual goal tallies as a practice Kotoko will move away from.
There are some clubs having, when a striker scores five goals, he gets a bonus. That’s so bad for your team. Those things, we don’t do anymore.”
The remarks form part of a wider rebuilding project at Kotoko since Menzo’s appointment, which the club has said is intended to align its academy and senior structures around a single football philosophy while strengthening technical leadership ahead of the new season.