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Former Hearts of Oak striker Ishmael Addo has shockingly revealed that he got to know about the tragic May 9 disaster a week after the event.
The lethal forward inspired Hearts of Oak to a comeback win over Asante Kotoko at the Accra Sports Stadium after the Porcupines had broken the deadlock on May 9, 2001.
One of Addo’s goals didn’t sit well with the visitors who felt it should have been ruled offside while others claimed Kotoko should have been awarded a foul in the build-up to the goal.
As a result, fans threw objects onto the pitch out of fury which compelled the police to fire tear gas in a bid to help end the chaos. However, it rather led to the loss of 127 lives making it Africa’s worst-ever sports-related disaster.
“I actually didn’t see what transpired in the whole chaos. I saw it as a normal Hearts vs Kotoko game which had all the tensions like it has always been in the past so I didn’t even know what happened after the game,” Ishmael Addo told Dan Kwaku Yeboah TV on Youtube.
He said even though he saw a tear gas shot, he didn’t know how serious it was due to how games of that nature had panned out in the past.
“I was with Stephen Oduro and Lawrence Adjei [both Kotoko players] at one side of the pitch waiting for the tear gas to calm down so we could move.
“The actual incident happened after I had taken my leave so I didn’t know what was transpiring at the time and the internet wasn’t really accessible in Ghana at that time so it was difficult to know.
Addo explained further that since he wasn’t a fan of watching TV to even get a grasp of his own replays, he never knew that tragedy had occurred.
According to him, former Hearts of Oak board member the late Alhaji Suleiman Ibrahim (Alhaji Hearts) informed him of a possible move to Europe the following day with the sole aim of stopping the news from reaching him due to the fact that Addo scored the goal which triggered the fans.
“I was sent to Italy for a move which was believed to help me get a deal at Lecce, the day after the match against Kotoko. However, it was rather a plan to prevent me from hearing the news in order to avoid any psychological implications,” he further revealed.
“A friend called to apportion the blame on me for causing the disaster even though I was yet to know about it which got me a bit confused so I got a full understanding of the issue when I returned to Ghana from Italy after about a week,” he concluded.
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