Agenda: Absence of darling Scorpions at AFCON 2017

By Fanta Mady Swarray It is yet another notable absence of the darling Scorpions at the African continent’s flagship tournament currently taking place in Gabon. Scorpions and the Gambia has never made it to the continental football showcase since our independence 51 years ago despite several failed attempts by our once upon time golden age of footballers in the 60s 70s and and the 80s when the national past time was organized in Banjul. Sadly and noticeably despite even the city Mafias’ gallant efforts, intentions and best practices, the Gambia remains a shadow of itself in terms of CAN appearance. Despite football’s general and overwhelming public and private sector appeal, we could not even manage to win the sub— region’s once popular Zone Two regional trophy. Our players did not lack the determination and sacrifice to succeed but lacks capability and wherewithal to break into the big boys of the continental football. We salute and commend our former players, referees, coaches and administrators for their land mark and pioneering role and urged the new administration to make the best use of the available resources and to spend responsibly and within the approved budget. Our football today did not lack the financial resources but it suffering from unreasonable spending leading to accusation of unnecessary short term loans not limited to bank overdrafts. With the miserable failures and false two normalization programs that ushered in the current administration of street smarts and so called graduates has become a scapegoat of fiscal and financial in- discipline, if the reports from the just ended AGM are anything to go by. Successive regimes at the GFF including this one, has by all account and despite numerous overused and out fashion rebranding and team building, failed awfully and the ugly reality is the Scorpions campaign for both the FIFA World Cup and CAN qualifiers in 2016 left the Gambian public with a sour taste in their mouth and a nasty noise in our ill fitted attempt to reach the summit of Africa. The result of the Sang Ndong team both home and away are disappointing and embarrassing and is in complete contrast with the purpose of our rebranding and team building exercise and it is time for us to get serious and stop using football as a charitable foundation were our resources will be invested on national teams who could not even beat Real de Banjul or Gamtel in a sunshine Banjul derby. A signature GFF project which happened to be the U20 national team also let the country down in their final group game against Guinea when we blew a rare good opportunity to beat Guineans on home turf at the independence stadium to ensure our last and only chance to qualify for CAF U20 Finals in Zambia Administrators at the football house should be aware that our country is endowed with active citizens who are doing more than enough to promote and develop sports in general and football in particular and their school boy bullying would not work and should repose their confidence in the media for efficient delivery of their mandate. I will return.]]>