Exactly three months from today, December 22, 2015, the scorpions of The Gambia will go into match day three of the ongoing AFCON qualifier yet, The Scorpions are without a coach since The GFF parted ways with Raoul Savoy.
The Gambia will travel to Mauritania to play against their sub-regional counterparts on Wednesday 23, March 2016 and four days later, 27 March 2016 The Gambia will host Mauritania at home at the Independence Stadium in Bakau.
Announcing Mr Savoy’s departure, the second vice president of the Gambia Football Federation, Ebou Faye, said, the termination is geared towards the rebuilding process the GFF has envisaged saying the results during Raoul’s tenure weren’t favourable.
Bakary K Jammeh, a coopted member of the GFF, said the GFF will focus on its strategic development plans which includes the promotion of grassroots football. According to him, the plan is to build a team that will compete and compete well in future continental and world championships.
“The focus is to use the bottom-up approach of building a team. So we will go back to the schools, develop youth football, the national league and while we’re doing this we want a coach who will be here to see the talents we have,” Jammeh said.
Bakary also stated that they want to restructure the football academies in the country to become better, ensure that the right ages are playing in their right places and to give the second division the right consideration. “This” according to him, “Will make our league clubs better and once our clubs are producing better players, we will have a pool of players in Europe to scout for national duties.
“Our aim is not to get results that will not be sustainable. We want to do this with a coach who shares the same vision with us and has the right approach to getting there one day,” K Jammeh said.
The Executive Director of the National Sports Council, Marcel Mendy, stated that the Gambia Football Federation and the Government had enough frameworks that when followed and supported can bring the country results. He however added that what is needed is funding which according to him cannot all come from the government or the GFF.
“This is why we partnered to put up an investment plans to help fund our joint activities. But even if we have all the resources in the world, if the personnel to utilize the resources aren’t there, we will remain where we are. We need the right personnel to fit in the right medium,” Mendy said.
He concluded by saying that, “Yes funding football is expensive but we will face it because we are tired of just competing.”