A huge storm has developed in the football fraternity following the expulsion of some clubs by the regional football association of Upper River Region URRFA, for attending a training programme organised by the Team Restore Confidence TRC led by Sadibou Kamaso.
Mr Kamaso led a team to challenge the current Gambia Football Federation GFF leadership at elections two years ago.
Ever since, he has been involved in football development activities such as training club administrators and seeking scouting and marketing avenues abroad for Gambian players.
However, the GFF leadership still considers him as huge rival and is not opened to dealing with him on football matters.
Accordingly, when the TRC announced a training for URR football clubs, the regional FA warned all its affiliated clubs not to take part saying the TRC has no authority to organise such.
However, a few clubs defied the order and attended the training facilitated by Kamaso and TRC, organised under the auspices of the regional sports committee, arguing that football should not continue to be bedeviled by ‘pettiness and unnecessary politics’.
In the last few days the URRFA, true to its word. announced it has expelled all the clubs who defied its order not to attend the TRC training.
The move has caused an uproar with fans accusing the GFF of being behind the decision of the URRFA.
”To be honest my Region URR football association should do better than this rubbish instead they should be engaging relevant football authorities to bring more football development in the region because I’m yet to see any meaningful development brought to the region by GFF neither or the Gambia government. I think that should be their concern by now but not this kind of action. Shame on them,” one commentator said.
Another one said: “The first thing they got wrong is, the training was never organised by Sadibou but the District Sports Committee. Sadibou just facilitated it”.
Another fan noted: ”I hope the Ministry of Youth & Sports intervene and fix this. GFF does not own football in our country. Why would a mere institution think of taking such action?”.
“There is only one word for this … and that is dictatorship, and just to remind you Gambia Football Federation – that the Gambia is now a democratic country and not even you can surpress a democratic legal system. To the expelled teams, I say, take your case to CAS like Young Africans just did,” another one said.
