The purported letter dated September 2, 2013 under the subject ”Application for Engagement in the Preliminaries of the 19th Edition of the African Youth Championship in Senegal 2015”, required all national associations in the continent interested in taking part to pay a fee of US$500 by December 31, 2013. But more pertinently, it stated in the last paragraph: “We would like to draw your attention that only the players born on the 1st January 1995 or after this date are eligible to play in this championship.”
Following the emergence this letter, The Standard contacted the Gambia Football Federation whose second vice president Kebba Touray confirmed seeing the letter but again repeated the GFF’s position that no rules have been violated since the players under contention are not exactly twenty years old and are therefore qualified.
When asked if he is not worried that the letter’s subject specifically mentioned ‘preliminaries’, Touray maintained that as far as their understanding of the phrase ‘Under-20’ goes, the members of the squad that played in Liberia were eligible because they were not over the set age limit.
By Lamin Cham
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