Ghana's junior national football team, Black Starlets and the champion club Kumasi Asante Kotoko made it a sweet double victory over North African teams at the weekend.

This was a defining moment for Ghana football as the Black Starlets beat their Libyan counterparts 2-1 in the U-17 African championship qualifying series in Tripoli to qualify for the next stage of the competition, on a 5-1 aggregate having won the first leg 3-0 in Accra.

Coach Kwasi Afranie has once again proved that when it comes to unearthing young talents he is first among equals.

The Starlets now have a date with the winner of the Gambia- Sierra Leone match to determine who qualifies for the finals of the championships in Algeria.

Barely 24 hours after the Starlets triumph in Libya, Champion club Asante Kotoko also faced a tough home match in the CAF Confederation Cup at the Baba Yara Sports Stadium in Kumasi against J.S. Kabylie of Algeria. It was the last match in the first round of the championships and with all four teams in the group including El Mereikh from Sudan and Etoile Sahel of Tunisia winning their home matches, Kotoko were under serious pressure to perform. Luckily they rose to the occasion and led comfortably 3-0 till injury time when lack of concentration cost them a goal in a match that they could have won by at least a margin of five.

With El Mereikh and Etoile Sahel yet to play their last first round match, Asante Kotoko top the table with six points with Mereikh, Sahel and Kabylie following in that order with three points apiece.

None of the clubs has won away and it is therefore going to be a tough battle for Kotoko who will play two away matches in the second round starting with the return leg against Kabylie next Friday. There will be another away encounter against Mereikh before they settle at home against Etoile Sahel at the Baba Yara Sports Stadium in Kumasi in the final match.

The tight points' build-up among the clubs is so close that it is possible the number of goals scored could be a deciding factor in the end. This explains why Kotoko fans were not too enthused when Kotoko carelessly allowed the Algerians to get that consolation goal in injury time. Most football analysts put some of the blame on Coach Bashiru for that leisurely approach towards the end of the game. The way the coach substituted his top strikers Eric Bekoe and Jordan Opoku naturally gave the rest of the players on the pitch the gut feeling that all was over.

What happened to Kotoko in the dying minutes of the game should be a timely lesson for both coach and the players that the match does not end until the referee blows his final whistle. All said and done it was vintage performance by Asante Kotoko and especially goal poacher Eric Bekoe who maintained his record as the championship's top scorer with nine goals so far to his credit.

The verdict of many knowledgeable football analysts is that Kotoko's all attacking play is quite effective and if they can maintain their rhythm and not to resort to the unproductive defensive play certain clubs usually adopt in away matches,then they can beat the Algerians in front of their home crowd and progress to win the ultimate prize.