It was not deliberate, it was ignorance. Time and again, the Go team made comments in various forums for years showing they really knew nothing about programming language development past 2000.
All they knew was C and that they wanted to create a language that compiles faster than C++. That's all.
They made a deliberate decision to design a language that did not take many developments in PL design since the 70's into account.
They had their reasons, which make sense in the context of their employer and their backgrounds.
Many people, myself included, prefer to program with languages that do not focus so much on simplicity