Former Asante Kotoko defensive stalwart and coach Stephen Frimpong Manso has downplayed the relevance of juju or black magic on Hearts vs Kotoko clashes.

The defender played for Asante Kotoko for several year in the 80's and 90's and says that all those rituals people do is just to psyche them and nothing else.

According to the former Kotoko coach, you cannot assemble a bad team and just do juju and expect to get results as results are achieved with good materials and proper preparation and not juju.

Speaking in an interview with Kumasi based Akoma Fm in a conference call with Hearts of Oak's Mohammed Polo, Frimpong Manso says that people have so much believe in juju that it turns to hurt them in the long run when they are disappointed by their juju.

"It is difficult for me to stick my neck out and say there is juju in football but everyone has his own believe there are people as part of preparing for the game they add all those stuff."

" Some people have pastors who pray for them, others give handkerchiefs with a lot of writings, some give some water to be sprinkled and there is the general team one where they sometimes sprinkle some substance on you and at times they soak the jerseys in some concoctions even before you wear it."

"But there are some people they have so much believe that If they don’t see such things before games it limits their abilities on the pitch."he told Kumasi based Akoma Fm

"But in all this you can’t assemble bad players and give them juju and expect them to go and score."

"In as much as there is juju you need good players and preparations to win games. You must have a very good team and prepare them well before you can win matches juju with bad players won’t win you games."

"I have had a lot of experiences with this juju thing and we can’t talk about them all."

"For instance, when playing friendly games, I don’t think any team does juju but someone can miss a chance on the goal line which on any normal day we will attribute the miss to juju but when it happens in friendlies we will not attribute any juju to it."

"In football a lot of things can happen which you will never understand but we always attribute those things to ‘mallam’ goals."

"I believe depending on your believe that is where you attribute the happenings on a football pitch." he added.