The Scorpions has never been to AFCON |
The Scorpions of the Gambia will
continue bid to make a debut in Africa’s highest soccer competition, the Africa
Cup of Nations on Wednesday, February 29, 2012.
The team will host the Desert Foxes of
Algeria in Banjul in the 1st leg of the preliminary rounds for AFCON
2013, which will be held in South Africa.
The Scorpions has endured conspicuously
stop-start AFCON qualifying campaigns, the longest period of unsuccessful
attempts by a Gambian national football team to reach a continental
championship. However, hopes are being raised once again with emphasis for the
team to maintain its long-standing unbeaten home record (since 2008).
With the launch of Gambia for Gold
2012-2014, to raise funds for national soccer teams except for the Olympic
team, the under 23. The Gambia for Gold committee and its initiators, the
Ministry of Youth and Sports believed “it’s our time”, but that has been far
from reality, given the embarrassing campaign for Gabon and Equatorial Guinea.
Veteran sport journalist and football
commentator, Moses Ndene had warn prior to Gambia’s visit to Namibia in last
year’s AFCON qualifiers that “We need not to raise hopes so high”, after the team
won convincingly at home against D.R. Congo in a friendly.
However, with the level of preparation
this time, the team not involved in games since October 2011, notable absentees
and some of the players apparently arriving less than a week before the game,
Moses warning could remain the status quo.
The Scorpions will enter the new
campaign headed by one of Gambia’s most successful national team coach, Peter
Bonu Johnson.
Bonu’s first outing will feature
familiar foreign-based Gambian players but with a few noticeable “absentees” in
the persons of Pa Dembo Touray (Captain), Adourahman Dampha, Sainey Nyassi, and
Tijan Jaiteh, with at least three home-based players expected to be included in
the team.
Bonu was appointed late last year by the
Ministry of Youth and Sports to head the team for one year, after the sacking
of the former Belgian coach, Paul Put on October 31, 2011 barely two years
before his contract was due to expire.
Mr. Put, who is serving a life
ban in his country for his
“involvement in a match fixing scandal”, ended a pitiful AFCON 2012 qualifying
campaign on October 8 with a draw (1-1) against Burkina Faso in Banjul.
Meanwhile, with reported frictions
between the handlers of the game, the sports ministry and the Gambia Football
Association (GFA), the blame game over the jeopardized campaign of the senior
national team in 2012 has cool-off.
For now football authorities in Banjul
seems set to focus on upcoming campaigns. The Sports Ministry announces
forthwith that Gambia’s President, Yahya Jammeh has agreed to cut short working
hours on Wednesday to allow civil servants to go to the stadium to support the
team.
The move followed anticipations that
“the disgruntled football fans” in the country may turn out poorly, as have
been the case in the past. But for a country which has never been to Africa’s
biggest football competition, its football dreams remain “hanging on a balance
of probabilities”.
Author: Modou S. Joof
Twitter: (@Msjoof)
Facebookpage: The-North-Bank-Evening-Standard
It is always great to see football teams from some of the smaller countries in Africa do well!
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