As Gambia prepares to take on Djibouti for a place in the group stages of the 2021 African Cup of Nations qualifiers, Gambians have been assessing the Scorpions chances of securing a maiden spot in Cameroon.
Victory over the East Africans in October will see Tom Saintfiet’s charges join Angola, Gabon and the Democratic Republic of Congo in Group D of qualifying. Two of the four teams will then qualify for the summer event.
Speaking in an interview with www.gambiaff.org, Mr. Ebou Faye, the Second Vice President of The Gambia Football Federation (GFF) and Head of GFF Competitions said the Scorpions now have a competitive team in place that Gambians can identify with. He said presently the coach has about 40 professionals to choose from. “Is a reasonable draw, Djibouti has never qualified like The Gambia but we believe that we stand a chance when you look at what we have done with the National Team over the years and the state of the team now. We believe that there is opportunity to go to the group stage and now we have already started planning for the match against Djibouti,” he said.
“Since we came into office, we had so many challenges especially with the poll of players, travelling, stability of the team and finance. We have addressed the poll of players and we also addressed the stability of the team; that took a lot of time but the idea was to make sure we have a stable team that can compete. The travel, we have also addressed that because it was a challenge; as a poor country we cannot have our own flights to matches. What we can do is to look at the routes that are available. To travel to Djibouti is not easy because you either have to go through Ethiopia, which doesn’t have many good hotels or via Turkey. These are things we need to look at and see which one will be favourable because Djibouti is far in Eastern Africa. We have to work with government to make sure that we have the necessary funds as the GFF have been taking care of the National Team all these years. But we believe that with the good relationship we have with government things will improve and they will be able to provide the funds to prepare the team.”
Asked if it is a matter of must for the team to qualify for the next AFCON, Mr. Faye said it is a desire of all Gambians because they want to watch their team play. He said the Federation has been working over the years to ensure that they put in place the necessary structures for the team to qualify, adding that during the last qualifiers the objective was to build a competitive team. He said the objective now is to qualify. “[However], we have to address the Djibouti match first which is a two legged game; so when we pass that hurdle we can strategise for the group matches. DR Congo is a footballing nation and have been African Champions before; Gabon and Angola have all qualified before. We played with Angola once which we won in a friendly, so it gives us an opportunity and the team did extremely well collecting points during the last qualifiers,” he affirmed.
Mr. Faye noted that another of the biggest challenges of the National Team was to win away matches but with recent successive away victories over Morocco and Guinea, which is in itself unprecedented, has given the team the hunger and desire to do well. He further noted that having drawn two matches with Algeria in the qualifiers and the Desert Foxes going on to become African champions by winning all their matches in the competition is another source of motivation for the boys.