Estranged Accra Hearts of Oak coach, Herbert Addo, is heading for the rival camp of Kumasi Asante Kotoko a few days after severing ties with the Phobians. Barely 24 hours after being served notice by Hearts not to renew his contract, officials of Kotoko cashed in on the situation to renew their interest in the veteran trainer.

When the Graphic Sports contacted Coach Addo last Wednesday, he confirmed that Kotoko had contacted him to ascertain whether he was still interested in their offer to contract him.According to the coach, Kotoko had expressed interest in him before the Coca-Cola Top 4, but he declined the offer since he had then begun preparing Hearts for the just-ended competition.

In a typical case of one man's poison becoming another's meat, Kotoko officials are bent on signing on Herbert Addo to handle the team alongside German Hans Kodric who is already in Kumasi.According to a source close to Kotoko, though King Faisal's German coach, Hans=Dieter Schmidt has also expressed interest in the Kotoko job, they are not keen on contracting him in order to avoid any conflict with their city rivals.

Kotoko's move would definitely inspire the former Hearts trainer to absorb any shock which the sudden termination of his romance might have brought to him. He said though he had anticipated that move from the management of Hearts, he least expected it to come at this period when he was deeply committed to preparing a team for the CAF Champions League.

"I was surprised because I had just been handed a draft of a new two-year contract to study towards a final meeting after the Top 4 during which the deal would be concluded", he disclosed.Contrary to that, however, Coach Addo stated that somebody called him from South Africa recently to inform him about the management's move to part ways with him.

"I'm not worried about the decision because that is the nature of our job', he revealed.According to him, he had taken steps to instil discipline in the team after some club officials hinted him that some of the players had been sabotaging him for the past two seasons. He described what had happened as quite unfortunate as he used the Top 4 tournament to prepare Hearts for the Champions League and therefore had an idea of his first 14 players for Africa.

He confirmed that Hearts are indebted to him to the tune of ?80m but denied rumours that he was contemplating taking the team to court to seek redress